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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1453 ***
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+  DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say--May God grant it!
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those
+of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so
+naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent
+land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest
+of other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic
+preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain ignorant
+and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing the
+generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
+gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
+
+The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so closely
+allied to architecture that the majority of observers can reconstruct
+nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life, from the
+remains of public monuments or the relics of a home. Archaeology is to
+social nature what comparative anatomy is to organized nature. A mosaic
+tells the tale of a society, as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus
+opens up a creative epoch. All things are linked together, and all
+are therefore deducible. Causes suggest effects, effects lead back to
+causes. Science resuscitates even the warts of the past ages.
+
+Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
+provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential facts.
+The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to
+man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been,
+and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is rare indeed that
+the picture of a locality where lives are lived does not recall to
+some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith. The comparison
+between a present which disappoints man’s secret wishes and a future
+which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of sadness or of
+placid content.
+
+Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
+Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
+conclusion to man’s uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
+family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
+comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
+beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
+sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
+Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life
+of feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
+nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
+superficial minds deny the heart’s existence. The crowd prefers
+the abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
+persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
+immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity. Therefore,
+to impress this multitude carried away on the current of existence,
+passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the mark, to
+exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello, Mademoiselle de la
+Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds alone disapprove
+such excess, and respect only the energy represented by a finished
+execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The life of this
+essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions of happiness
+which the masses desire as the lot of the average citizen.
+
+A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies
+no weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan
+“far-niente.” Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
+essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
+creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
+lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
+first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make the
+manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as cold
+as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has brought her
+power to bear, and has modified all things, even the effects of climate.
+If we observe attentively the productions of various parts of the globe,
+we are surprised to find that the prevailing tints from the temperate
+zones are gray or fawn, while the more brilliant colors belong to the
+products of the hotter climates. The manners and customs of a country
+must naturally conform to this law of nature.
+
+Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
+monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
+atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
+the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw
+it into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
+acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries of
+vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In exchange for
+its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that fairy glass-ware in
+which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From Austria it learned the
+ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular saying, takes three steps
+backward to one forward; while its trade with India poured into it the
+grotesque designs of China and the marvels of Japan.
+
+And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of all
+things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general storehouse
+of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco brought into
+one smoky outline the scattered features of its national physiognomy.
+Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of their territory,
+the Flemings became a people homogeneous through their pipes and
+beer.[*]
+
+    [*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+
+After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
+products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country of
+Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for itself
+an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs which
+bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its ideality and
+produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic grace, the swing of
+comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the bold flight of ode and
+epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile in discoveries, and
+trained to scientific discussions which demand time and the midnight
+oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal enjoyment. There men look
+exclusively to the thing that is: their thoughts are so scrupulously
+bent on supplying the wants of this life that they have never risen, in
+any direction, above the level of this present earth. The sole idea
+they have ever conceived of the future is that of a thrifty, prosaic
+statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came from a domestic desire to
+live as they liked, with their elbows on the table, and to take their
+ease under the projecting roofs of their own porches.
+
+The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
+comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
+craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
+compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
+on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
+the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
+houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
+monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and that
+of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient industry,
+are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked to show in
+human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could do no better
+than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster, capable, as was
+proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way, and without the
+incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-town.
+
+Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
+which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
+ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one of
+the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of Flemish
+life.
+
+Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
+and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
+buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of
+a venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
+fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
+left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality, its
+traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland.
+Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and
+the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the
+capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
+
+The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
+the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
+than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
+one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
+production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
+never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
+were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
+of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
+to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
+compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound to
+share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children, and
+property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The syndic’s
+forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who were
+excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though he was,
+in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+
+The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
+execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions in
+the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of martyrs
+gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who punished revolt
+through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre over Douai, the
+Claes preserved their great wealth by allying themselves in marriage
+with the very noble family of Molina, whose elder branch, then poor,
+thus became rich enough to buy the county of Nourho which they had long
+held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
+are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
+represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
+Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
+the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
+over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
+francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
+the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a fortune.
+As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in litigation
+between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family which remained
+in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and assumed the title of
+Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a legal right to it. But
+the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to the haughty arrogance of
+Castile: after the civil rights were instituted, Balthazar Claes cast
+aside the ragged robes of his Spanish nobility for his more illustrious
+descent from the Ghent martyr.
+
+The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families exiled
+under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth century, the
+Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and traditions of
+their ancestors. They married into none but the purest burgher families,
+and required a certain number of aldermen and burgomasters in the
+pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her to the family. They
+sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or in Holland; so that
+the time-honored domestic customs might be perpetuated around their
+hearthstones. This social group became more and more restricted, until,
+at the close of the last century, it mustered only some seven or eight
+families of the parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing robes
+of office and magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with
+the habits of their life.
+
+The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was
+well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of
+the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
+objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,--the House
+of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
+which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
+houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
+their homes.
+
+The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
+which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
+doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
+bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette
+of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark
+upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care
+taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note
+all its details.
+
+The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white stone
+ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the window
+in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross, which
+divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal bar,
+placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes of
+the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding
+at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with
+three rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
+projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of
+a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and diamond-shaped,
+were set in very slender leading, painted red. The walls of the house,
+of brick jointed with white mortar, were braced at regular distances,
+and at the angles of the house, by stone courses.
+
+The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
+while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
+a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver’s shuttle
+threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like
+steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the
+rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws
+of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at
+the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the
+two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through which
+the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient usages.
+
+From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
+cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
+the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
+were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The
+front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened
+color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as
+a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which
+would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our climate and the
+effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our own health.
+
+The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
+the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
+eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
+moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
+the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in
+the red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
+immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave
+the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which would
+have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to
+take lodgings over the way.
+
+When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
+from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
+coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-door
+in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door escaped
+from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn, ponderous
+sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and through the
+depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron. This archway,
+painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily sprinkled with fresh
+sand, led into a large court-yard paved with smooth square stones of
+a greenish color. On the left were the linen-rooms, kitchens, and
+servants’ hall; to the right, the wood-house, coal-house, and offices,
+whose doors, walls, and windows were decorated with designs kept
+exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading its way between four red
+walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy tints and reflections
+which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic appearance to faces, and
+even to trifling details.
+
+A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+Flanders the “back-quarter,” stood at the farther end of the court-yard,
+and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
+ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-yard,
+and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as the
+house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led at
+one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and
+were in line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor
+entering the latter could see through to the greenery which draped the
+lower end of the garden. The front building, which was reserved for
+receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art and
+accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in the eyes of a Claes,
+nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures contained in
+the parlor, where for over two centuries the family life had glided on.
+
+The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
+days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
+say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
+the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,--this
+Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges.
+The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich craftsman.
+Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van Huysum, grown
+rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-decoration in
+ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van Artevelde,--that
+brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This
+wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained
+about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van
+Huysum’s masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers
+whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his native town,
+proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give
+him Van Huysum’s great work; but the weaver had already despatched it to
+Douai.
+
+The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
+Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr’s memory, came to Douai to
+frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore
+the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell for
+nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes
+the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court
+of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as
+their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very
+high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last century;
+on it now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five twisted
+branches, in bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows were
+draped by wide curtains of red damask with a flowered black design,
+lined with white silk; the furniture, covered with the same material,
+had been renovated in the time of Louis XIV. The floor, evidently
+modern, was laid in large squares of white wood bordered with strips
+of oak. The ceiling, formed of many oval panels, in each of which Van
+Huysum had carved a grotesque mask, had been respected and allowed to
+keep the brown tones of the native Dutch oak.
+
+In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
+stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
+symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
+stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
+with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
+silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and sombre.
+The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none. Although
+on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the sunshine danced
+upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard admitted
+so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli scarcely
+glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be gorgeous
+on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled with soft
+shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the sun on the
+tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+
+It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes, in
+other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
+it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+looking out upon the garden. The sun’s rays fell obliquely upon the
+house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
+carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo
+projected through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an
+ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment,
+would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full
+of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the
+feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses
+consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed
+in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as
+sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which
+pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
+
+The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
+and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A
+dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
+as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
+folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
+light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show
+in preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
+impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
+expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
+that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most thoughtless
+mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive grief that is
+rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left on this woman’s
+face like lava congealed about a crater. She might have been a
+dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal depths of
+wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human protector.
+
+The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
+nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
+the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
+heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
+prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
+sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
+altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
+small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
+though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
+dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of
+the soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in
+this strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and
+so sharply curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior
+malformation; yet there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it,
+and the partition between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light
+shone through it. Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed
+the pride of noble birth, their expression was one of kindliness and
+natural courtesy.
+
+The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
+questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
+and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world
+obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were
+men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its
+tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was
+seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+
+She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
+days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
+emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
+her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
+nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
+time powerless over destiny.
+
+When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
+the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
+to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
+God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
+the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
+hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
+moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to
+serve the dinner.
+
+At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
+and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her
+tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of
+pain that was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the
+state of happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from
+care. Whether it were that the habit of living in this house to which
+infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects
+that are imperceptible to the senses of others, but which persons under
+the influence of excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether
+Nature, in compensation for her physical defects, had given her more
+delicate sensations than better organized beings,--it is certain that
+this woman had heard the steps of a man in a gallery built above the
+kitchens and the servants’ hall, by which the front house communicated
+with the “back-quarter.” The steps grew more distinct. Soon, without
+possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet
+her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man
+upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor.
+
+The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
+thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong
+step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, “Fire!” his
+feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary
+gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the
+dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting
+spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have
+felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed
+devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two
+iron weights were striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once
+either the heavy, undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of
+a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
+
+When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
+upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
+still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
+servants’ hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed
+in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading from the
+parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the
+sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the
+armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by
+the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna.
+She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into the depths
+of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the wall which
+she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now pushed in with
+such brusque violence that the poor woman herself seemed jarred by the
+shock.
+
+Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
+look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
+erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
+right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself,
+although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile,
+contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line
+which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply;
+her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at
+Balthazar.
+
+It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family
+of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who
+had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood
+there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he
+was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable
+likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because his labors,
+whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column
+was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square
+shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though
+nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once
+perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous
+figure by some possible singularities of the man’s life.
+
+His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
+Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
+which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes
+had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult
+causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and
+the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary
+tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent,
+which made the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken;
+his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a
+short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was
+long rather than oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every
+human face a likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in
+that of Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse’s
+head. The skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire
+were incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space,
+as if to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though
+the flames that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+
+The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
+face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of
+an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose
+fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the
+inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed
+to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible
+reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous
+fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this man;
+it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his mind
+expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with the
+anomalous peculiarities of his person.
+
+His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
+had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned
+and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the
+master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth
+trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his
+cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,--completing an array
+of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened
+a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the
+negligence of genius.
+
+Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
+the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
+and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
+than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices
+than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits
+accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the
+social world fears to square accounts with the man of learning in his
+lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his
+misfortunes or his poverty.
+
+If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
+Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
+companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
+fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
+ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
+things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
+to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
+have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
+man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: “He
+must have been very handsome in his youth.” A vulgar error! Never was
+Balthazar Claes’s appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater,
+had he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience,
+of Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,--where all was broad and noble,
+and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
+
+The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word
+was sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
+complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
+service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
+elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household,
+to manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
+living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
+with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
+the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
+enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+
+At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
+he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
+was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
+of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
+simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
+forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the
+eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul,
+but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which
+gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the
+most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste
+had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly
+pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably,
+and without producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects
+of her conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders
+only, one of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
+
+She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
+garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
+said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman’s
+submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
+the pride of her Spanish nature:--
+
+“Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
+you have been to mass or vespers.”
+
+Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands,
+and waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
+indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those
+beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their
+youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to
+wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical
+disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices
+to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel because it
+contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our nature leads us
+to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in
+the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
+
+Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
+said,--
+
+“Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers.”
+
+He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
+magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
+short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
+
+“Why should they not combine within a given time?”
+
+“Is he going mad?” thought the wife, much terrified.
+
+To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
+by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance
+back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the
+Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
+came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
+manners in the society of Madame d’Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince
+of Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
+originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth
+won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the
+tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends
+ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment when that
+world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more
+attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of life. He
+frequented the society of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who
+at that time was better known to the world for his enormous fortune as
+a “fermier-general” than for his discoveries in chemistry,--though later
+the great chemist was to eclipse the man of wealth.
+
+Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated,
+and became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
+Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
+and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
+that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
+those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
+finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
+society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+
+The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
+his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender,
+which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted
+to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian
+salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and
+the little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man
+must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--Paris, the city of
+cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
+Science, Art, or Power.
+
+The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine’s pigeon to
+its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
+Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
+of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
+had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar’s father and mother had
+left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time
+in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he
+needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened
+upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in
+Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he
+met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as
+to marriage; from his youth he had been accused of never following the
+beaten track.
+
+One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
+then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
+discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
+destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she
+was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar’s old cousin, at whose
+house the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or
+not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying
+man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents’
+property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name;
+thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future
+to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de
+Temninck would marry late in life and without property when, young and
+wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
+
+A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle
+de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
+Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
+listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
+who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
+handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
+consented to allow him to woo her.
+
+It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
+submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
+feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
+and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
+cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--emotions,
+terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore,
+to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
+keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
+lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
+exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear
+that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the
+hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic
+propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the
+promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an intonation;
+trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden desires to speak
+and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the secret eloquence
+of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the mysterious workings
+of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine discernment which
+lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a flavor to silent
+devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love, and the weaknesses
+of its power.
+
+Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
+The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as
+the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused
+her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide
+in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women
+delight in making known by their manners,--wearing it proudly, like a
+coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared
+to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and
+answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves,
+would they not be in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful
+woman can be her natural self,--the world overlooks her little follies
+or her clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the
+noblest expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace
+of her gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole
+bearing. She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no
+faults; she is denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do
+so is never given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at
+every moment, must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise?
+Such a woman can exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance.
+Where are the hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of
+bitter and stinging pity.
+
+These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
+and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by
+the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
+apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense of
+embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
+and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving
+and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone.
+Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
+enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the
+love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to
+wear the draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her
+Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her
+beautiful as before.
+
+Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
+herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
+domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
+had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied
+with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless
+value to the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and
+the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes
+she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness
+of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung
+from Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
+embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what
+he loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each
+day of life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married
+life the handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest.
+After gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending
+to reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
+ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
+delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
+Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
+
+The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
+woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
+being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling
+and sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
+fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not
+believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however short
+its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
+
+Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
+unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
+with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
+in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
+increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
+the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
+fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
+into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
+character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
+harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
+some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering.
+One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly,
+but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and
+uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections
+as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the
+daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man of social life is
+essentially incomplete, without being signally to blame. Men of talent
+are as variable as barometers; genius alone is intrinsically good.
+
+For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
+the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone
+are capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
+equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
+asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
+in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he
+is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle
+and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is
+vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to
+take dull men as the small change for great ones.
+
+Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
+delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like
+all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to
+develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
+happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
+grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
+century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the
+risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart
+the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother’s
+milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied
+her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be that of
+a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was never
+exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity. He
+treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied
+against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty
+woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender;
+he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that
+crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a
+wife.
+
+Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
+and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
+was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was
+equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of
+his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
+wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+
+Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
+intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite,
+but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the
+genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind
+fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death.
+Balthazar’s own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his
+wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she
+received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon
+the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her
+personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an
+ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied the life of each
+heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one another excluded the
+paltry things of existence, while it magnified the smallest accessories.
+
+The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
+he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--are
+they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
+go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To
+forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of
+a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the deification of
+her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written: “Blessed are the
+imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love.” If this be so, surely
+beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in
+the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as
+another is married for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a
+woman disinherited of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam,
+is true love, the mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a
+sentiment for which the day of disenchantment never comes. That woman
+has charms unknown to the world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws
+herself: she is beautiful with a meaning; her glory lies in making her
+imperfections forgotten, and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+
+The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women
+in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra, Jeanne
+de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
+Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
+famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
+number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
+of love.
+
+This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
+more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
+limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
+not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based?
+An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to
+herself the inconstancy of her master.
+
+By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
+up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
+convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
+the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
+dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
+dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to
+have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good
+result; it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of
+mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world,
+she became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first
+years of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least
+the knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society:
+but he was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the
+heart. Josephine never forgot anything that Claes told her relating
+to themselves; she remembered the most trifling circumstances of their
+happy life; but of her evening studies nothing remained to her on the
+morrow.
+
+This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
+but Madame Claes’s understanding of the passion of love was so simple
+and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and
+the thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she
+managed always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that
+her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another
+so well that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion,
+phenomena arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the
+conditions of life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not
+laughter, joy, and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when
+its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion,
+without considering either the means or the end.
+
+No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
+Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
+Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she
+knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth
+and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so
+near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of
+her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear
+which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish
+bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally
+happy,--preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness,
+possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort,
+supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything
+within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.
+
+The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
+born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal
+to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially
+during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those
+nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy
+of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the
+moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet
+house begins, were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children
+to her husband.
+
+In 1805, Madame Claes’s brother died without children. The Spanish law
+does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
+seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes
+was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it,
+Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that
+of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so
+nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage
+which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance,
+seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to which this
+sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to
+determine.
+
+The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
+objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
+worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
+periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation
+followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity
+of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became
+hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery
+leading from the family building to the reception-rooms on the first
+floor of the front house, as well as some fifty others placed about the
+salons, were the product of the patient researches of three centuries.
+Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg,
+Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt,
+Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a
+minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
+
+Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
+Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact,
+each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which belongs in
+a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a
+last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest
+known collection of tulips.
+
+Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
+and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was
+simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
+of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a
+country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
+basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
+old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
+ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the
+richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved
+the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of
+property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with
+limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.
+Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife’s
+property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his
+own. The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living,
+and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the
+country, but which in ten years’ time, if well-preserved, would return
+an enormous value.
+
+The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
+that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
+which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when
+she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.
+She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.
+Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where,
+indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the
+education of her children tended to keep her.
+
+Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
+household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
+conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
+secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar
+Claes’s passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate,
+seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and
+fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the
+cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always had a leaning), and
+dispensed him from the duty of following a mania like his ancestors.
+
+At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
+first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
+night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt
+it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
+submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar’s confidence;
+which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she
+had never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of
+obtaining an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still
+retained enough of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a
+refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had its phases, and
+only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at which it destroyed
+the happiness of the family.
+
+However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
+months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
+character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
+Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
+the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he
+would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led
+by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them
+known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely
+domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar
+became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would
+surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain
+that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than
+happy during several months.
+
+She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
+him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows
+no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment
+without suffering. She waited for the return of her husband’s affection,
+saying daily to herself, “To-morrow it may come,”--treating her
+happiness as though it were an absent friend.
+
+During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
+Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of
+her husband’s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an
+abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman’s pride, hurt for
+the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which
+separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar’s
+condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his
+domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor
+carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the
+light of his Pepita’s dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy,
+seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.
+
+The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
+ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to
+her that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
+seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair,
+then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of
+melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling
+herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating
+consideration for her in this secret occupation by which he secured
+to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his
+independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which make the
+happiness of many a marriage.
+
+Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
+to read her husband’s heart, and found it closed. Little by little,
+she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he
+neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could
+be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that was not of the
+heart, but which, to a woman’s mind, is not less withering. His love
+was dormant, not lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune
+remained the same.
+
+The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one
+word,--hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened
+that whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
+courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
+happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the
+clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to
+return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven brightened, she
+was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him with importunate
+questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly
+escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the gulf of meditation from
+which no word of hers could drag him.
+
+Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
+its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
+woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
+him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
+and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
+changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime
+through love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure
+remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and
+seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When
+the children had gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed
+her, Pepita would say, “My friend, are you ill?” and Balthazar would
+make no answer; or if he answered, he would come to himself with a
+quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and utter a “No” so
+harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the palpitating heart of
+his wife.
+
+Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
+Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world
+of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
+Balthazar’s aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons
+were aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
+Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
+expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
+compelled to defend her husband’s peculiarities.
+
+“Monsieur Claes,” she said, “has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
+him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
+family but to that of his country.”
+
+This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
+town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
+places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
+reaction in favor of Balthazar.
+
+The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
+of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
+remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
+household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day.
+But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the humiliating
+medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance,
+that her husband constantly imported instruments of physical science,
+valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the
+highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. She ought, so her
+kind friends added, to think of her children, and her own future; it was
+criminal not to use her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal
+path on which he had entered.
+
+Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
+these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her
+apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
+system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little
+scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at
+such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change,
+the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and
+replied:--
+
+“My dear, you could not understand it.”
+
+Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
+complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
+whose life she shared.
+
+“Very well, since it interests you so much,” said Balthazar, taking his
+wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, “I will tell you that
+I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
+earth.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry,
+the aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself
+in the way, or that Madame Claes’s secret anxieties made her less
+agreeable than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but
+her intimate friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his
+laboratory all day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only appeared
+in the bosom of his family at dinner-time.
+
+After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his
+country-house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes
+he went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving
+Madame Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing
+a fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
+other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to send
+into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and suffer
+till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which the gates
+closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful of the
+tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the happiness of
+getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of feeling to his
+wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept silence and dared not
+question him, for when she did so on the occasion of his first absence,
+he answered with an air of surprise:--
+
+“Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?”
+
+Passions never deceive. Madame Claes’s anxieties corroborated the rumors
+she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her youth had
+taught her to understand the polite pity of the world. Resolved not to
+undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more into the privacy of
+her own house, now deserted by society and even by her nearest friends.
+
+Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+Balthazar’s dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the
+least bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish
+life. At first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar’s valet,
+Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing, but
+even that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when Balthazar,
+unaware of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of those that
+were stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+
+The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years, during
+which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was apparently and
+suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately reigned. Spanish
+by race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within her when she
+discovered her rival in a Science that allured her husband from her:
+torments of jealousy preyed upon her heart and renewed her love.
+What could she do against Science? Should she combat that tyrannous,
+unyielding, growing power? Could she kill an invisible rival? Could
+a woman, limited by nature, contend with an Idea whose delights are
+infinite, whose attractions are ever new? How make head against the
+fascination of ideas that spring the fresher and the lovelier out of
+difficulty, and entice a man so far from this world that he forgets even
+his dearest loves?
+
+At last one day, in spite of Balthazar’s strict orders, Madame Claes
+resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his life
+was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
+her husband’s labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
+mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory
+of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier
+alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent
+his witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the
+outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of
+the way. For a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with
+angry impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her--all that
+her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
+servant was preferred to a wife!
+
+The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
+the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar’s anger. She had
+hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
+roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
+bottom.
+
+“God be praised! you are still alive!” he cried, raising her.
+
+A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
+husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+
+“My dear, I forbade you to come here,” he said, sitting down on the
+stairs, as though prostrated. “The saints have saved your life! By what
+chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
+just escaped death.”
+
+“Then I might have been happy!” she exclaimed.
+
+“My experiment has failed,” continued Balthazar. “You alone could I
+forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs.”
+
+Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+
+“Decompose nitrogen!” said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
+and burst into tears.
+
+The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have
+a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is
+for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves.
+More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when
+the language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from
+letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain
+as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in
+love than men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but
+his mind.
+
+To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed
+her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival
+might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who
+loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification
+like this only proved Madame Claes’s powerlessness and humiliated the
+feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she had reached a
+point where her ignorance parted her from her husband. Worse than all,
+last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he was often in
+danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know,
+his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral prison from which
+there was no issue, in which there was no hope. Madame Claes resolved
+to know at least the outward attractions of this fatal science, and
+she began secretly to study chemistry in the books. From this time the
+family became, as it were, cloistered.
+
+Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
+the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
+we find it at the moment when this history begins.
+
+The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate
+women, Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the transaction,
+the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame
+Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband’s notary and,
+disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him
+guess them, and even ask her the humiliating question,--
+
+“How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?”
+
+Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
+grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the
+same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the latter,
+though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins. Monsieur
+Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded
+to his father’s practice, was the only person who now had access to the
+House of Claes.
+
+Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude
+that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the
+disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well
+known throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that her
+husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him
+with chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and
+credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies
+without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became
+due. Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the
+chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
+
+Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers
+of chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which
+amounted to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and Pierquin
+studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though
+some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were
+unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of precious
+metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities. The large
+sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of the articles,
+by the precautions needed in transporting some of them, more especially
+valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals,
+and finally by the cost of instruments made to order after the designs
+of Monsieur Claes himself.
+
+The notary had made inquiries, in his client’s interest, as to Messieurs
+Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was
+sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur
+Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results
+obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.
+Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases
+from the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the
+whole thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to
+the very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the
+sum borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which
+Monsieur Claes was held. He then revealed the full extent of the evil,
+telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her
+husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the
+patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value.
+As for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his
+cousin, with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had
+been wholly unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was
+working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+
+Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two
+years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now added
+a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying. Women
+have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do they fear
+so much more than they hope in matters that concern the interests of
+this life? Why is their faith given only to religious ideas of a future
+existence? Why do they so ably foresee the catastrophes of fortune and
+the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment which unites them to the
+men they love gives them a sense by which they weigh force, measure
+faculties, understand tastes, passions, vices, virtues. The perpetual
+study of these causes in the midst of which they live gives them, no
+doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing effects in all possible relations
+of earthly life. What they see of the present enables them to judge
+of the future with an intuitive ability explained by the perfection
+of their nervous system, which allows them to seize the lightest
+indications of thought and feeling. Their whole being vibrates in
+communion with great moral convulsions. Either they feel, or they see.
+
+Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame
+Claes foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the
+deliberate ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of
+Balthazar; if it were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he
+was capable of throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute
+indifference. But what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal
+feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman
+that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come
+between them. Suddenly she found herself at times more mother than wife,
+though hitherto she had been more wife than mother. However ready she
+had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her children to the man who
+had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to whom she was still the
+only woman in the world, the remorse she felt for the weakness of her
+maternal love threw her into terrible alternations of feeling. As a
+wife, she suffered in heart; as a mother, through her children; as a
+Christian, for all.
+
+She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be
+guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach him
+for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness he
+had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his purposes?
+And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the law, told
+her that parents were the depositaries and guardians of property, and
+possessed no right to alienate the material welfare of the children. To
+escape replying to such stern questions she preferred to shut her eyes,
+like one who refuses to see the abyss into whose depths he knows he is
+about to fall.
+
+For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed
+the family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
+governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
+the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
+families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
+feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
+made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his stable
+and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his present
+occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of his
+establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes suppressed
+the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her present isolation
+from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so without pretending
+to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So far, facts had
+contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future was more
+becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living called for no
+explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one who lives up to
+his income is considered a madman.
+
+And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and to
+place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the Molinas,
+the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days before the
+one on which this story opens, the money derived from the sale of the
+diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three o’clock in the
+afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to vespers, she met
+Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who turned and accompanied
+her to the church, talking in a low voice of her situation.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said, “unless I fail in the friendship which binds
+me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position,
+nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can
+hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from
+the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he
+has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance
+of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
+thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
+them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
+retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become
+of you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
+dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the
+house, and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, ‘The devil!’ It
+was the first sign of reason I have known him show for three years.”
+
+Madame Claes pressed the notary’s arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
+“Keep it secret.”
+
+Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
+pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between
+her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her
+mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The
+Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her
+soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was
+accomplished! Between them and their father’s honor she must no longer
+hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her husband terrified
+her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of
+his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must
+now depart from the submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The
+interests of her children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished
+tastes, the man she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to
+common matters from the higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from
+a smiling future and plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists
+and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big
+with glory; he could only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty
+hope. Then too, was he not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk
+with such good sense on every subject that he must be sincere when he
+declared he worked for the glory and prosperity of his family. His love
+for his wife and family was not only vast, it was infinite. That feeling
+could not be extinct; it was magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+
+Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into the
+ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show him the
+sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when he was
+listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his love for her
+would lessen! If she had had no children, she would bravely and joyously
+have welcomed the new destiny her husband was making for her. Women who
+are brought up in opulence are quick to feel the emptiness of material
+enjoyments; and when their hearts, more wearied than withered, have once
+learned the happiness of a constant interchange of real feelings, they
+feel no shrinking from reduced outward circumstances, provided they
+are still acceptable to the man who has loved them. Their wishes, their
+pleasures, are subordinated to the caprices of that other life outside
+of their own; to them the only dreadful future is to lose him.
+
+At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her true
+life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And thus,
+when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the deep
+armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her children,
+directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a message to her
+husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished to see him.
+But although the old valet did his best to make his master leave the
+laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus gained time
+for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to the hour nor
+the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs that could not be
+paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that of the present
+and the future. This influx of painful interests, ideas, and feelings
+overcame her, and she wept.
+
+As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
+of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more distracted
+than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she was magnetized
+for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied of all expression,
+by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled from that bald brow.
+Under the shock of this impression she wished to die. But when she heard
+the callous voice, uttering a scientific wish at the moment when her
+heart was breaking, her courage came back to her; she resolved to
+struggle with that awful power which had torn a lover from her arms, a
+father from her children, a fortune from their home, happiness from all.
+And yet she could not repress a trepidation which made her quiver; in
+all her life no such solemn scene as this had taken place. This dreadful
+moment--did it not virtually contain her future, and gather within it
+all the past?
+
+Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies
+the smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily before
+the masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the rush of
+thoughts that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the feelings
+under the weight of which her heart was crushed as her husband slowly
+crossed the room towards the garden-door. Most women know that agony of
+inward deliberation in which Madame Claes was writhing. Even one whose
+heart has been tried by nothing worse than the declaration to a husband
+of some extravagance, or a debt to a dress-maker, will understand how
+its pulses swell and quicken when the matter is one of life itself.
+
+A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband’s
+feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief; but to Madame
+Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears. When she
+saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards
+him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should stand before him!
+would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the
+glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved to avoid all dangerous
+chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a clear
+voice,
+
+“Balthazar.”
+
+He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his
+wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at
+intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium,
+and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never
+forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine,
+unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which
+her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable
+pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside
+herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed
+her wounded feelings,--
+
+“Monsieur, I am speaking to you!”
+
+“What does that mean?” answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting
+a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like
+a thunderbolt.
+
+“Forgive me, my friend,” she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and
+put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back. “I
+am dying!” she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+
+At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid
+reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this
+attack. Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door
+upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden
+staircase that his wife’s dress having caught on the jaws of one of the
+griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off
+with a loud noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their
+chambers, but the door of Josephine’s bedroom was locked.
+
+He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, “My God! the key,
+where is the key?”
+
+“Thank you, dear friend,” said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. “This
+is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+heart.”
+
+“Good God!” cried Claes, “the key!--here come the servants.”
+
+Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and
+left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving
+them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+
+“What is it, my dear life?” he said, sitting down beside her, and taking
+her hand and kissing it.
+
+“Nothing--now,” she answered. “I suffer no longer. Only, I would I had
+the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet.”
+
+“Why gold?” he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+kissed her once more upon the forehead. “Do you not give me the greatest
+of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious
+wife?”
+
+“Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I
+see that you are still the same.”
+
+“What anguish do you speak of, dear?”
+
+“My friend, we are ruined.”
+
+“Ruined!” he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding
+it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard:
+“To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless. Yesterday,
+in searching for a far more important secret, I think I found the means
+of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear
+wife! in a few days’ time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness--I
+am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be
+indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are
+full of you--of us.”
+
+“Enough, enough!” she said, “let us talk of it all to-night, dear
+friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much
+joy.”
+
+“To-night,” he resumed; “yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave
+my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of
+the heart--Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!”
+
+“You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?”
+
+“Poor child, you cannot understand it.”
+
+“You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read
+Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
+Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,--in fact, all the books
+about the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall
+understand you.”
+
+“Oh! you are indeed an angel,” cried Balthazar, falling at her feet,
+and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. “Yes, we will
+understand each other in all things.”
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “I would throw myself into those hellish fires which
+heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you
+thus.” Then, hearing her daughter’s step in the anteroom, she sprang
+quickly forward. “What is it, Marguerite?” she said to her eldest
+daughter.
+
+“My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to dinner
+we need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this morning.”
+
+Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them
+to the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+ante-chamber as she said:
+
+“My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your right.”
+
+“Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be complete,”
+ she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch expression on her
+face. “My friend, go into your own room; do me the kindness to dress for
+dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off this ragged clothing;
+see those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric acid which left these
+yellow edges to the holes? Make yourself young again,--I will send you
+Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my dress.”
+
+Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication,
+forgetting that it was locked on his side. He went out through the
+anteroom.
+
+“Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I
+don’t want Martha,” said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+
+Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a joyous
+action, exclaiming: “Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are in your
+muslin gown and that pink sash!” Then he kissed her forehead and pressed
+her hand.
+
+“Mamma, papa has kissed me!” cried Marguerite, running into her mother’s
+room. “He seems so joyous, so happy!”
+
+“My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for
+the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object
+of his search. This day is a festival for us all.”
+
+“My dear mamma,” replied Marguerite, “we shall not be alone in our joy,
+for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put
+on another sash, this is faded.”
+
+“So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?”
+
+“In the parlor, playing with Jean.”
+
+“Where are Gabriel and Felicie?”
+
+“I hear them in the garden.”
+
+“Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father
+has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look
+at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in
+dressing.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children
+through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw
+that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted
+with gold, commonly called “darning-needles.”
+
+“Be good, my darlings,” she said, raising the lower sash of the window
+and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door
+of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in
+joyous tones:--
+
+“You won’t leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+can.”
+
+Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have
+supposed her lame.
+
+“When monsieur carried madame upstairs,” said the old valet, whom she
+met on the staircase, “he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke
+the jaw of that griffin; I’m sure I don’t know who can put it on again.
+There’s our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!”
+
+“Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don’t have it mended at all--it is not
+a misfortune,” said his mistress.
+
+“What can have happened?” thought Lemulquinier; “why isn’t it a
+misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?”
+
+“Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin,” said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
+door.
+
+The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
+that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--
+
+“Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?”
+
+“Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
+exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each.”
+
+“Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day,” she replied. “Stay and dine
+with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext,
+I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about
+it. All is well,” she added, noticing the lawyer’s surprise. “In a few
+months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed.”
+
+Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
+at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
+followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--
+
+“I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+moment.”
+
+Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
+lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
+with a pretended air of indifference.
+
+Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
+good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
+pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
+called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
+and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce
+from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his
+habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to
+indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed the
+shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively with earthly
+interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy. To marry into
+the family of Claes would have been to him an object of extreme desire,
+if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He could seem generous,
+but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And thus, without explaining
+to himself the motive for his change of manner, his behavior was harsh,
+peremptory, and surly, like that of an ordinary business man, when he
+thought the Claes were ruined; accommodating, affectionate, and almost
+servile, when he saw reason to believe in a happy issue to his cousin’s
+labors. Sometimes he beheld an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no
+provincial notary might aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl
+too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial,
+and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and
+kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his
+better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled
+his personal appearance.
+
+Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to
+her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the
+change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed
+its meaning and tried to read her daughter’s mind by a penetrating
+glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young
+girl’s manner showed complete indifference.
+
+After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics
+of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where
+his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his
+boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man,
+and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation
+of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs.
+Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly
+polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk
+stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons,
+a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his
+beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his
+hands, all with such care that he was scarcely recognizable to those
+who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his
+children, his wife, and the notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty
+years old, and whose courteous and affable presence was full of its
+former attractions. The weariness and suffering betrayed by the thin
+face and the clinging of the skin to the bones, had in themselves a sort
+of charm.
+
+“Good-evening, Pierquin,” said Monsieur Claes.
+
+Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+wife’s lap and tossed him in the air.
+
+“See that little fellow!” he exclaimed to the notary. “Doesn’t such a
+pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!” he
+cried, tossing Jean into the air; “down, down! up! down!”
+
+The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the
+ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she
+might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,--simple
+apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+
+“Let me see how you can walk,” said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+
+The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold
+buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his
+boots.
+
+“You are a darling!” cried Balthazar, kissing him; “you are a Claes,
+you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?” he said to his
+eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. “Are you struggling
+valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp
+hold of mathematics?”
+
+Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+that characterized him.
+
+“My dear Pierquin,” he said, “perhaps you have something to say to me.”
+ He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, “Come and see my
+tulips.”
+
+Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to
+repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable,
+so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed
+her, exclaiming:--
+
+“My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+to-day.”
+
+“It is long since I have seen my father so kind,” answered the young
+girl.
+
+Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his
+arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next
+room, the whole family following.
+
+The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with
+paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken
+side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of
+family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs
+of game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully
+arranged here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage
+of strange birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which
+evidently had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, showed the square shape with twisted columns and the low back
+covered with a fringed stuff, common to that period, and glorified by
+Raphael in his picture of the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these
+chairs was now black, but the gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff,
+carefully renewed from time to time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+
+The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this
+room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful
+antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The
+glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen
+in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of
+faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard
+Palissy, came from the English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware
+was massive, with square sides and designs in high relief,--genuine
+family plate, whose pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and
+chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards
+fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion
+altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will readily be supposed
+that the Claes’s household made it a point of honor to possess the best.
+
+All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for
+the daily use of the family. The front house, where the social
+entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels,
+being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost
+to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in
+the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and
+simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew outside
+the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about
+the casements.
+
+“You are faithful to the old traditions, madame,” said Pierquin, as he
+received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread. “This
+is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle
+des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup
+of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of
+Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere
+else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing;
+furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets,
+lances, shields, and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house,
+selling his old furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging
+them for Sevres porcelain,--which does not compare with either old
+Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I’m Flemish to the core;
+my heart actually bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful
+inlaid furniture for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact
+is, society wants to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed,
+even the old methods of art. When people insist on going so fast,
+nothing is conscientiously done. During my last visit to Paris I was
+taken to see the pictures in the Louvre. On my word of honor, they
+are mere screen-painting,--no depth, no atmosphere; the painters were
+actually afraid to put colors on their canvas. And it is they who talk
+of overturning our ancient school of art! Ah, bah!--”
+
+“Our old masters,” replied Balthazar, “studied the combination of colors
+and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain.
+You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less
+cultivated in these days than formerly.”
+
+Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary’s remark
+that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the
+brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she
+had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off the
+thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+
+“Ha! ha!” Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes’s mind
+returned to the conversation, “so they are discussing my work in Douai,
+are they?”
+
+“Yes,” replied the notary, “every one is asking what it is you spend so
+much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a
+man like you should be searching for the Philosopher’s stone. I ventured
+to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was
+attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God’s work
+out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man
+to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I
+share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as
+well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted
+had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you.”
+
+“You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+evil is to make me ridiculous,” said Balthazar. “Ha! so they think me
+ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in
+honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect
+my dear townsmen bestow on wealth.”
+
+Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in
+his tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his
+children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit,
+and pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was
+certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks
+and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart
+which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.
+
+Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about
+the table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of
+his secret hopes. The sudden change in his master’s ways was even more
+significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness
+he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come
+to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his
+master’s researches from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist
+when expected results disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency
+of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in
+whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived
+for his master a superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror,
+admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a
+lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope. Every night he went
+to bed saying to himself, “To-morrow we may float in gold”; and every
+morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of the night before.
+
+His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral
+qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which
+each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen
+thread were called in Flanders, “mulquiniers”; and that no doubt was
+the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from
+a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
+misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of
+a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and
+its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of
+euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of character
+or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and
+seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and shining patches
+that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole
+demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig
+which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.
+
+The old valet’s outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity
+which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to his master,
+the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he
+maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The
+denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pass with an interest mingled
+with awe; to all their questions he returned sibylline answers big with
+mysterious treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he assumed
+an annoying authority over his companions, employing it to further his
+own interests and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler
+of the house. Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply
+attached to the families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for
+Balthazar. If any trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event
+happened to the family, he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer
+as phlegmatically as ever.
+
+Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in
+the garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower
+being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so
+arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain
+dragon’s-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named
+“tulipa Claesiana,” combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of
+each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar’s father, who had
+frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such
+precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant
+always in the parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The
+stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions
+of the plant were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose
+seven colors were distinguishable from each other with the clearly
+defined brilliancy which formerly gave such fabulous value to these
+dazzling plants.
+
+“Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs’ worth of
+tulips,” said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the
+many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty
+of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into
+jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary’s words.
+
+“What good do they do you?” continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar;
+“you ought to sell them.”
+
+“Bah! am I in want of money?” replied Claes, in the tone of a man to
+whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+
+There was a moment’s silence, during which the children made many
+exclamations.
+
+“See this one, mamma!”
+
+“Oh! here’s a beauty!”
+
+“Tell me the name of that one!”
+
+“What a gulf for human reason to sound!” cried Balthazar, raising
+his hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. “A compound of
+hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions,
+under the same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold
+colors, each of which constitutes a distinct result.”
+
+His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so
+rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as
+if remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a
+mysterious sign, saying,--
+
+“You do not yet understand me, but you will.”
+
+Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual
+to him.
+
+“No, I am sure you do not understand him,” said Pierquin, taking his
+coffee from Marguerite’s hand. “The Ethiopian can’t change his skin, nor
+the leopard his spots,” he whispered to Madame Claes. “Have the goodness
+to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn’t draw him out
+of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate.”
+
+So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+kissed little Jean in his mother’s arms, and retired with a low bow.
+
+When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round
+the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was
+causing her by whispering in her ear,--
+
+“I knew how to get rid of him.”
+
+Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him
+see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her
+forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+
+“Let us go back into the parlor,” she said, after a pause.
+
+Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games
+for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not
+notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past
+nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after
+helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in
+the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife’s hand as he talked
+to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire
+without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:--
+
+“Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child.” She drew her down, kissed
+her tenderly on the forehead, and said, “Carry your book into your own
+room; but do not sit up too late.”
+
+“Good-night, my darling daughter,” said Balthazar.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife
+remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last
+glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose
+outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.
+When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of
+emotion,--
+
+“Let us go upstairs.”
+
+Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife’s
+chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The
+good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of
+virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic
+superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender
+feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and
+sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes’s position would have
+wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done
+so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect
+of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a pretty
+creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a necessity.
+No one better understood the meaning of the saying, “A pretty woman is
+self-created,”--a maxim which guided every action of Napoleon’s first
+wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes was ever natural
+and true.
+
+Though Balthazar knew his wife’s chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of
+soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.
+The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of
+the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously
+placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose
+effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The
+gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of
+pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly
+distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors
+of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret
+of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell
+him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of
+her joys and woes.
+
+The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out
+sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The
+silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume
+that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully
+drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding
+the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered
+husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was
+trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her
+throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely
+glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven’s wing, went
+to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no
+sound to penetrate the chamber from without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was
+sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive
+woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful,
+gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman’s greatest charm lies
+in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a
+weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments.
+Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the
+rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden
+rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her
+physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself
+gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for
+a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted
+and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray
+background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa.
+This was what she wanted.
+
+“You promised me,” she said, taking his hand which she held between her
+own magnetic palms, “to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit,
+dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage
+to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to
+understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how
+it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over
+night I had left you happy.”
+
+“Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+coquettishly delightful?”
+
+“Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to
+me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to
+keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of
+all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while
+Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone.
+I hate all that comes between us. If you win the glory for which
+you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--I
+alone--should be the giver of your happiness.”
+
+“No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that
+first led me into this glorious path.”
+
+“A man!” she cried in terror.
+
+“Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in
+1809?”
+
+“Do I remember him!” she exclaimed; “I am often annoyed because my
+memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals
+of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped
+of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!--What awful
+impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any
+inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here.”
+
+“That Polish gentleman,” resumed Balthazar, “was named Adam de
+Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give
+up the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I think,
+by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as
+adepts. When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the
+captain gave a start of surprise. ‘Have you studied chemistry?’ he
+asked. ‘With Lavoisier,’ I answered. ‘You are happy in being rich and
+free,’ he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a
+man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the
+brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be
+expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that startled
+me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last gasp he
+had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation for his
+country’s fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had always felt
+an irresistible vocation. ‘And I see you recognize as I do,’ he added,
+‘that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder, each yield a
+substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the same qualitative
+result.’
+
+“He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he
+said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general
+meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of
+tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred
+my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the
+anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me
+like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah’s tongue; for my
+studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.
+
+“‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘the parity of these three substances, in
+appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
+nature ought to have a single principle. The researches of modern
+chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural
+effects. Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic
+nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all
+animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less
+perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which
+gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more important
+part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the products of
+this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen,
+hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance, non-metallic and
+solid, carbon. Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of
+movement and sensation, denied the power of growth (too hastily
+accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple substances, or
+elements, whose different combinations make its products. Is it probable
+that means should be more numerous where a lesser number of results are
+produced?
+
+“‘My master’s opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have
+one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the
+knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to
+rediscover. Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again;
+we have chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would apparently
+then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we could decompose
+nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but
+three. This brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the
+ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to
+scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet
+little,--much, because the science has never recoiled before difficulty;
+little, in comparison with what remains to be done. Chance has served
+her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure
+carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance possible to create?
+The old alchemists, who thought that gold was decomposable and therefore
+creatable, shrank from the idea of producing the diamond. Yet we have
+discovered the nature and the law of its composition.
+
+“‘As for me,’ he continued, ‘I have gone farther still. An experiment
+proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which
+lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first place, the
+experiment itself.
+
+“‘Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic
+nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
+Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may
+reach the product of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts
+from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis.
+Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity
+to produce after burning them enough ashes for the experiment. Well,
+by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium,
+phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and
+carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress
+had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not
+exist in the brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the
+cress, nor in the distilled water with which the plant was nourished,
+whose composition was known. But since they are no more to be found
+in the seed itself, we can explain their presence in the plant only by
+assuming the existence of a primary element common to all the substances
+contained in the cress, and also to all those by which we environed
+it. Thus the air, the distilled water, the brimstone, and the various
+elements which analysis finds in the cress, namely, potash, lime,
+magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one common principle floating in
+the atmosphere like light of the sun.
+
+“‘From this unimpeachable experiment,’ he cried, ‘I deduce the existence
+of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all created
+things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net meaning
+and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to
+be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine
+humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter, the
+medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all things
+human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+
+“‘It was at this point,’ he went on, ‘that poverty put an end to my
+researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of
+your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to the
+conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME
+MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon.
+The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive
+electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish
+those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal
+existence.
+
+“‘Oh, monsieur!’ he cried, striking his brow, ‘when I know that I
+carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck
+of men who fly at each other’s throats at the word of command without
+knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My
+body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and
+men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My
+soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged
+in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,--for that
+principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same
+environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same
+phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently
+constituted exactly alike,--one produces yellow silk, another white; and
+if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble neither
+father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact surely involves
+the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.
+
+“‘Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe
+that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean
+worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented
+Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the
+type of all the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout
+all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter, Force, and
+Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some
+confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa,
+all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for
+their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise
+alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is
+only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had
+I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with
+Motion. Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to
+their death, my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he
+is soaring towards the Absolute, while I--I shall die like a dog in the
+trenches!’
+
+“When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a
+touching tone of brotherhood, ‘If I see cause for a great experiment
+I will bequeath it to you before I die.’--My Pepita,” cried Balthazar,
+taking his wife’s hands, “tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
+cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
+timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--”
+
+“Oh!” cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
+husband, “that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
+deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness
+of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross?
+did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye
+which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could
+have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor
+father, nor master of your family.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
+piercing glance at his wife, “do you blame your husband for rising above
+the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple
+of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your
+heart! Ah, my Pepita,” he cried, “you do not know what I have done. In
+these three years I have made giant strides--”
+
+His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
+she wept as she listened to him.
+
+“I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
+substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
+Why!” he continued, noticing that his wife wept, “I have even decomposed
+tears. Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium,
+mucin, and water.”
+
+He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted
+Josephine’s features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him
+with outspread wings far away from material existence.
+
+“This analysis, my dear,” he went on, “is one of the most convincing
+proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its
+hearth is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction
+of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case
+combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner, again,
+vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations producing
+dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain
+vegetables which existed before the period of the last cataclysm. But
+each time that nature has perfected an organism and then, for some
+unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation, instinct, or
+intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system), these three
+agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in direct proportion
+to the result obtained. Man, who represents the highest point of
+intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by which we arrive at
+a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is, among all zoological
+creations, the one in which combustion is found in its most intense
+degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen to some extent in the
+phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a man’s body reveals to
+our analysis. May not these substances be traces left within him of
+the passage of the electric fluid which is the principle of all
+fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself by a greater
+variety of compounds in him than in any other animal? Should not he have
+faculties above those of all other created beings for the purpose of
+absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute principle? and may he not
+assimilate that principle so as to produce, in some more perfect
+mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a retort. In my
+judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other
+product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an
+ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated
+to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the
+dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the force resulting
+from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--”
+
+“Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
+love--”
+
+“An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!”
+
+As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
+face rose by degrees to inspiration. “I shall make metals,” he cried; “I
+shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!”
+
+“Will you be the happier?” she asked in despair. “Accursed science!
+accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
+sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.”
+
+“Oh! oh! God!”
+
+“He denies Him!” she cried, wringing her hands. “Claes, God wields a
+power that you can never gain.”
+
+At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
+looked at his wife and trembled.
+
+“What power?” he asked.
+
+“Primal force--motion,” she replied. “This is what I learn from the
+books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
+like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to
+them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them,
+can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga
+wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the
+atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating.”
+
+“If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create.”
+
+“Will nothing stop him?” cried Pepita. “Oh! my love, my love! it is
+killed! I have lost him!”
+
+She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity
+of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than
+ever through her tears.
+
+“Yes,” she resumed in a broken voice, “you are dead to all. I see it
+but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
+it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
+companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would
+fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you
+to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within
+your breast the irresistible power that has mastered you--But no; God is
+good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores
+you, of the children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone
+who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds
+of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you,--nothing
+guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it
+otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred
+thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth!
+I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all
+I possess and say, ‘Take it, fling it into your furnace, turn it into
+smoke’; and I should laugh to see it float away in vapor. Were you poor,
+I would beg without shame for the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could
+my body yield your hateful Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those
+fires with joy, since your glory, your delight is in that unfound
+secret. But our children, Claes, our children! what will become of them
+if you do not soon discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin
+came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and
+cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I might spare you
+the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
+silver.”
+
+She saw her husband’s eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
+despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+
+“My friend,” she cried, “refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you,
+do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them,
+Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a
+wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood has
+sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes
+wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your
+life! And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the cause of my
+children before you, and not my own?”
+
+Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth
+her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her
+rival. Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her
+feet.
+
+“Have I caused you such grief?” he said, in the tone of a man waking
+from a painful dream.
+
+“My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,”
+ she said, passing her hand over his hair. “Sit here beside me,” she
+continued, pointing to the sofa. “Ah! I can forget it all now, now that
+you come back to us; all can be repaired--but you will not abandon
+me again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman’s
+influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the
+happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You
+may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a
+little for your good. I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.
+Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love Chemistry better than you love
+us. Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart;
+but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half. Tell me, is not my
+disinterestedness sublime?”
+
+She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
+women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
+contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
+habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth
+of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power she
+thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
+
+“Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may wish
+us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal
+disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of looking
+into futurity.”
+
+“Yes,” he exclaimed, “by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
+on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
+class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The prophet
+sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare and too
+obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation.”
+
+“Is this,” she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she
+had so unfortunately reawakened, “what you call an affinity?”
+
+“No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are neutral,
+they produce no reaction--”
+
+“Oh! hush, hush,” she cried, “you will make me die of grief. I can never
+bear to see my rival in the transports of your love.”
+
+“But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of my
+family. You are the basis of all my hopes.”
+
+“Ah, look me in the eyes!”
+
+The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole
+person Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and
+muslin.
+
+“Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science,” he said. “If I fall
+back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must drag me
+from them; I desire it.”
+
+She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,--a
+hand that was both strong and delicate.
+
+“But I ask more,” she said.
+
+“You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all,” he answered.
+
+“I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science,” she said,
+with fire in her eyes.
+
+“So be it--let Chemistry go to the devil!”
+
+“This moment effaces all!” she cried. “Make me suffer now, if you will.”
+
+Tears came to Balthazar’s eyes, as he heard these words.
+
+“You were right, love,” he said. “I have seen you through a veil; I have
+not understood you.”
+
+“If it concerned only me,” she said, “willingly would I have suffered
+in silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign. But
+your sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate your
+property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world
+will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But
+surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that his wife has
+shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of this no more,”
+ she cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. “To-night, my Claes,
+let us not be less than happy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
+Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
+to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did not
+enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
+move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months, only
+returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes determined
+to give, as in former years, to commemorate his wedding-day. He now
+began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder which his experiments
+and his indifference had brought into his business affairs.
+
+Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named Martha,
+who had never left her mistress since the latter left her convent. It
+was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole society of Douai
+with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all difficulties by
+proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the gardener’s son as
+a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin’s manservant. Thus the pinched
+circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the community.
+
+During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+cleverly able to outwit her husband’s listlessness. She commissioned him
+to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand staircase,
+the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque to order one
+of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the burgher tables in the
+northern departments. A fete like that the Claes were about to give is a
+serious affair, involving thought and care and active correspondence, in
+a land where traditions of hospitality put the family honor so much
+at stake that to servants as well as masters a grand dinner is like a
+victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived from Ostend, grouse were
+imported from Scotland, fruits came from Paris; in short, not the
+smallest accessory was lacking to the hereditary luxury.
+
+A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
+government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary fete
+of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion to the
+neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it
+a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was
+talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes,
+the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the
+events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These preparations
+now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest.
+Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the servant of
+science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the
+master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of
+surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special character
+to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all
+other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
+fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
+and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+
+The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
+luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the
+Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the
+grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made
+known on the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound
+grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved
+by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
+
+Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
+from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote,
+from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his
+promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the
+subject of the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their
+meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did
+honor to his patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this
+festal day brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the
+House of Claes shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite
+of its magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands
+of six generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last
+time.
+
+Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
+the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially
+by the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of
+her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters
+of that country loved to represent,--the head perfectly rounded and
+full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow,
+gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness
+which did not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the
+high square brow an expression of firmness, hidden at present under an
+apparent calmness and docility. Without being sad or melancholy, she
+seemed to have little natural enjoyment. Reflectiveness, order, a
+sense of duty, the three chief expressions of Flemish nature, were the
+characteristics of a face that seemed cold at first sight, but to which
+the eye was recalled by a certain grace of outline and a placid pride
+which seemed the pledges of domestic happiness. By one of those freaks
+which physiologists have not yet explained, she bore no likeness to
+either father or mother, but was the living image of her maternal
+great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges, whose portrait, religiously
+preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
+
+The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters forbade
+the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the
+pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however, retired early; only
+the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the
+intimate friends of the family. Little by little the brilliantly lighted
+house, to which all the notabilities of Douai had flocked, sank into
+silence, and by one o’clock in the morning the great gallery was
+deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon after another,
+and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant, grew dark and
+gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before the family. When
+the Claes returned to their own appartement, Balthazar gave his wife the
+letter he had received from the Polish officer: Josephine returned it
+with a mournful gesture; she foresaw the coming doom.
+
+From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the weariness
+and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after the family
+breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little Jean, and
+talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or embroidery
+or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the talk, and
+seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his wife came
+down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in an easy-chair
+looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite undisturbed by the
+rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was brought in, he read it
+slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to kill the time. Then he
+would get up, look at the sky through the window panes, go back to his
+chair and mend the fire drearily, as though he were deprived of all
+consciousness of his own movements by the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
+was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
+length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who
+have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects
+of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of material
+existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of expansion which
+need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of material life
+cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the
+mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving natures. Consequently,
+two isolated beings who know each other thoroughly ought to seek their
+enjoyments in the higher regions of thought; for it is impossible to
+satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them.
+Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects,
+he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart
+a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great
+geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a
+rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know
+all, and comprehend all.
+
+During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
+been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
+ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of
+his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources
+were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine’s
+relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis
+XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or
+the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the sham embassies
+from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues
+of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the
+expedients of a family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst
+of his grandeur he felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had
+rocked the cradles of his children was often at her wit’s end to rock
+his, or soothe the monarch now suffering from his misuse of men and
+things, of life and God. Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much
+power. Stifling in the clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the
+pomps of Science, of treasures for the human race, of glory for himself.
+He suffered as artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered
+beneath the pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two
+sovereigns; though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward
+force, the other by his weakness.
+
+What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
+she called society to the rescue, and gave two “cafes” every week. Cafes
+at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which, during
+a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and liqueurs
+which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the Flemish
+dainties and took their “cafe noir” or their “cafe au lait frappe,”
+ while the women sang ballads, discussed each other’s toilettes, and
+related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture by Mieris or
+Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet plumes, or the
+beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet, Balthazar’s
+efforts to play the part of host, his constrained courtesy, his forced
+animation, left him the next day in a state of languor which showed but
+too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
+
+These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
+it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they
+retarded Claes’s fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though he
+never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for
+the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have
+the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick
+person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner
+with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the
+fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When
+night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from
+the importunities of thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter
+another day,--seeming to measure time as the tired traveller measures
+the desert he is forced to cross.
+
+If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see
+the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings of the
+mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the heart. She
+dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to the laughter
+of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air of a man
+absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw him shake
+off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem cheerful, that
+he might not distress others. The little coquetries of the father with
+his daughters, or his games with little Jean, moistened the eyes of
+the poor wife, who often left the room to hide the feelings that heroic
+effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of which is well understood by
+women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks their heart. At such times
+Madame Claes longed to say, “Kill me, and do what you will!”
+
+Little by little Balthazar’s eyes lost their fire and took the glaucous
+opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His attentions to his
+wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing, grew heavy and inert.
+These symptoms became more marked towards the end of April, terrifying
+Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now intolerable, and who had all
+along reproached herself a thousand times while she admired the Flemish
+loyalty which kept her husband faithful to his promise.
+
+At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring him
+back to life.
+
+“Dear friend,” she said, “I release you from your promise.”
+
+Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+
+“You are thinking of your researches, are you not?” she continued.
+
+He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from remonstrating,
+Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss into which they
+were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed it, smiling.
+
+“Thank you,” she said; “now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
+me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
+jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
+and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
+diamonds.”
+
+The joy that suddenly lighted her husband’s face was like a death-knell
+to the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man’s passion was stronger
+than himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him to walk
+without faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge of a
+precipice. For him faith, for her doubt,--for her the heavier burden:
+does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to
+believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her connivance
+in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
+
+“The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
+Pepita,” said Claes, deeply moved.
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
+the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
+and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
+whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the
+contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to
+give vent to the joy that choked him.
+
+From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
+The future of her children, their father’s credit, were two motives as
+powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+unhappy woman never knew another hour’s peace of mind. The demon of
+Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
+agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
+and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed
+by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those
+of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit
+and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for
+compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the
+Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with
+terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an
+expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and
+feelings raged in her heart and mind. She beheld her children’s future
+fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not saving their father’s life? was
+it not her first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her
+for a moment.
+
+She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
+even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
+were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
+seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
+through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
+building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
+her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
+breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar’s
+experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming
+success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she
+looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
+Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
+the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the other.
+
+Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the
+poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair
+which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of
+the mother trembling for her children. She now practised the doleful
+silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing the gloom that
+pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that melancholy parlor
+without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad maternal foresight,
+she trained her daughters to household work, and tried to make them
+skilful in womanly employments, that they might have the means of
+living if destitution came. The outward calm of this quiet home covered
+terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer Balthazar had used
+the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty thousand francs in
+debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
+
+In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without result
+as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when he ended
+the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his impotence crushed
+him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted enormous sums of money
+drove him to despair. It was a frightful catastrophe. He left the
+garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and threw himself into a chair
+in the midst of his children, remaining motionless for some minutes as
+though dead, making no answer to the questions his wife pressed upon
+him. Tears came at last to his relief, and he rushed to his own chamber
+that no one might witness his despair.
+
+Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone with
+her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man, these
+broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the husband
+and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past sufferings. The
+victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said to her in a tone of
+dreadful conviction: “I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of
+my children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill
+myself,”--the words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband’s
+nature enough to fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an
+inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized
+her, and was all the more dangerous because she controlled its violent
+effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
+
+“My friend,” she said, “I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
+does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin,
+but an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de
+Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from
+ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is
+enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all
+that you owe to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an
+account against you.”
+
+Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
+now white.
+
+“Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
+they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus,
+to display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families:
+he thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
+recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
+amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
+continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with very
+little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in course of
+time and by economy; meantime you will be happy.”
+
+Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector
+of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
+Pepita’s, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
+convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
+with a nervous shudder.
+
+“I dared not tell you,” he said, “that between me and the Unconditioned,
+the Absolute, scarcely a hair’s breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
+only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
+centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,--in short, in a
+vacuum.”
+
+Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
+passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem in
+chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to the
+parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened daughters,
+and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her hands, kneeling
+one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her grief, and asking
+at intervals, “Mother, what is it?”
+
+“My poor children, I am dying; I feel it.”
+
+The answer struck home to Marguerite’s heart; she saw, for the first
+time on her mother’s face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which only
+comes on olive-tinted skins.
+
+“Martha, Martha!” cried Felicie, “come quickly; mamma wants you.”
+
+The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the livid
+hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in Spanish,--
+
+“Body of Christ! madame is dying!”
+
+Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+
+“Don’t alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha,” said her
+mistress. “My poor dear girls,” she added, pressing Marguerite and
+Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; “I wish I could live
+long enough to see you married and happy. Martha,” she continued, “tell
+Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name to come
+here.”
+
+The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha,
+both devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their
+own affections. Martha’s dreadful announcement,--“Madame is dying;
+monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,”--forced
+certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier.
+He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
+one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
+boudoir of a fine lady.
+
+“I knew how it would end,” said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+“There’s no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
+himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat.”
+
+Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
+which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
+Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
+made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a motion
+worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large mouth with
+bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+
+“Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,” he
+said; “and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold. There’s
+not the thickness of a farthing between us and--”
+
+“Well, you’ve got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don’t you give ‘em
+to monsieur? he’s your master, and if you are so sure of his doings--”
+
+“You don’t know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
+and heat the water,” remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+
+“I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
+and if you are allowed to have your way, you’ll make ducks and drakes of
+everything till there’s nothing left.”
+
+“And monsieur,” added Martha, entering the kitchen, “will kill madame,
+just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won’t let him swallow
+up everything he’s got. He’s possessed by the devil; anybody can see
+that. You don’t risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
+haven’t got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when
+we are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
+Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l’Abbe de Solis.”
+
+“I’ve got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the laboratory
+in order,” said the valet. “Besides, it’s too far--go yourself.”
+
+“Just hear the brute!” cried Martha. “Pray who is to give madame her
+foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+head.”
+
+“Mulquinier,” said Marguerite, coming into the servants’ hall, which
+adjoined the kitchen, “on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call at
+Dr. Pierquin’s house and ask him to come here at once.”
+
+“Ha! you’ve got to go now,” said Josette.
+
+“Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order,”
+ said Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
+despotic air.
+
+“Father,” said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
+descending the stairs, “can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
+town?”
+
+“Now you’re forced to go, you old barbarian!” cried Martha, as she heard
+Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter’s bidding.
+
+The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the family
+whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two women and
+Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of increasing the
+loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+
+This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the future
+of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor in
+misfortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine’s
+condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He saw
+them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor,
+too weak to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed
+abstractedly at his daughters now attending on their mother, without
+inquiring the cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or
+Jean attempted to speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to
+Balthazar. Such a scene was of a nature to make a young girl think; and
+Marguerite, placed as she was between her father and mother, was old
+enough and sensible enough to weigh their conduct.
+
+There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame
+Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar
+impelled her to justify in Marguerite’s eyes conduct that might, to the
+upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The very
+respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making
+herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his
+meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal
+majesty. Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only
+increased Marguerite’s admiration for her mother, to whom she was more
+particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives. This
+feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose causes
+naturally occupied the young girl’s mind. No human power could have
+hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by Josette, from
+enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of her home
+during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes’s reserve,
+Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the domestic
+drama. She was soon to be her mother’s active confidante, and later,
+under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+
+Madame Claes’s watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter,
+to whom she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards
+Balthazar. The firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in
+the young girl made her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle
+between father and daughter whenever her own death should make the
+latter mistress of the household. The poor woman had reached a point
+where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death
+itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the
+resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from
+encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future
+disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She
+hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she
+studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite,
+trusting that his daughter might continue to be to him an angel of
+love, while exercising over the family a protecting and conservative
+authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love upon her dear
+ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not willing to lower
+the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her into the secret
+dangers of his scientific passion before it became necessary to do so.
+She studied Marguerite’s soul and character, seeking to discover if the
+girl’s own nature would lead her to be a mother to her brothers and her
+sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+
+Madame Claes’s last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly
+to the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the
+care of property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of the
+Absolute.
+
+The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+monotonous beating of Balthazar’s foot, which he continued to trot,
+wholly unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was
+sitting beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid,
+convulsed face, turned now and again to her father, wondering at his
+indifference. Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw the
+Abbe de Solis leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing the
+court-yard.
+
+“Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel,” said Felicie.
+
+“That good young man!” exclaimed Madame Claes; “I am glad to welcome
+him.”
+
+Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother’s lips. For
+the last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred mysterious
+feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts that had lain
+dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to Madame Claes on
+the occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of
+those imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life;
+and their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief
+sketch of the two personages now first introduced into the history of
+this family.
+
+It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
+of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
+family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
+elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at
+the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+
+The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
+face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes.
+He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a
+painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and
+obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand.
+His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate,
+suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious
+purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning,
+his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been
+successively a Dominican friar, the “grand penitencier” of Toledo,
+and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French
+Revolution had not intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family
+would have made him one of the highest dignitaries of the Church;
+but the grief he felt for the death of the young duke, Madame Claes’s
+brother, who had been his pupil, turned him from active life, and he now
+devoted himself to the education of his nephew, who was made an orphan
+at an early age.
+
+After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
+near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
+Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led
+him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
+Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
+made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
+those ideas, he remained there,--all the more willingly because he
+was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
+continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
+censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame Guyon. His morals were
+rigid, his life exemplary, and he was believed to have visions. In spite
+of his own detachment from the things of life, his affection for his
+nephew made him careful of the young man’s interests. When a work of
+charity was to be done, the old abbe put the faithful of his flock
+under contribution before having recourse to his own means; and his
+patriarchal authority was so well established, his motives so pure, his
+discernment so rarely at fault, that every one was ready to answer
+his appeal. To give an idea of the contrast between the uncle and the
+nephew, we may compare the old man to a willow on the borders of a
+stream, hollowed to a skeleton and barely alive, and the young man to a
+sweet-brier clustering with roses, whose erect and graceful stems spring
+up about the hoary trunk of the old tree as if they would support it.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at his
+side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate sensibility,
+of half-dreamy innocence,--those fleeting flowers of youth which bloom
+perennially in souls that are nourished on religious principles. The old
+priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his pupil, preparing him for
+the trials of life by constant study and a discipline that was almost
+cloisteral. Such an education, which would launch the youth unstained
+upon the world and render him happy, provided he were fortunate in his
+earliest affections, had endowed him with a purity of spirit which gave
+to his person something of the charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest
+eyes, veiling a strong and courageous soul, sent forth a light that
+vibrated in the soul as the tones of a crystal bell sound their
+undulations on the ear. His face, though regular, was expressive, and
+charmed the eye with its clear-cut outline, the harmony of its
+lines, and the perfect repose which came of a heart at peace. All was
+harmonious. His black hair, his brown eyes and eyebrows, heightened
+the effect of a white skin and a brilliant color. His voice was such as
+might have been expected from his beautiful face; and something feminine
+in his movements accorded well with the melody of its tones and with
+the tender brightness of his eyes. He seemed unaware of the charm he
+exercised by his modest silence, the half-melancholy reserve of his
+manner, and the respectful attentions he paid to his uncle.
+
+Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the
+old abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking
+for obstructions that might trip his uncle’s feet and guiding him to
+a smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There
+was something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in
+the obedience that never cavilled at the old man’s orders; it seemed as
+though there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had given
+him. When the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in their own
+home or in the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes lift his
+head with so much dignity, as if to assert his metal should any other
+man assail him, that men of honor were moved at the sight like artists
+before a glorious picture; for noble sentiments ring as loudly in the
+soul from living incarnations as from the imagery of art.
+
+Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de
+Solis was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a
+man, invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity.
+Entering hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times
+to hide their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in
+black and looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face
+of a young man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their
+mutual astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each
+other in their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again
+with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal. Marguerite
+took her mother’s arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and
+find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like
+motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his
+arm. The light was cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures,
+and the half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances
+which are the joy of timid natures. Neither went so far, even in
+thought, as the first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble
+which stirs the heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from
+fastidiousness or modesty.
+
+The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed
+to overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a
+child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have
+thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love,
+listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure
+flames already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an
+irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first
+perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the
+musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more
+shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life? The first
+heart in which we draw the breath of love,--is it not our home, our
+native land? Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of
+music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and
+reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+
+When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an
+angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon
+Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought
+on the canvas with the living thought beside him. This involuntary and
+delightful homage was understood and treasured. The old abbe gravely
+praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and
+the maiden were silent.
+
+Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture
+gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders,
+all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this
+vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite’s
+mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray
+when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes. That voice,
+whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart,
+completed the revelation that had come to her,--a revelation which
+Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often
+happens that the man whom destiny employs to waken love in the heart
+of a young girl is ignorant of his work and leaves it unfinished.
+Marguerite bowed confusedly; her true farewell was in the glance which
+seemed unwilling to lose so pure and lovely a vision. Like a child
+she wanted her melody. Their parting took place at the foot of the old
+staircase near the parlor; and when Marguerite re-entered the room she
+watched the uncle and the nephew till the street-door closed upon them.
+
+Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which caused
+her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion observe
+her daughter’s manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to the house
+on the occasion of her illness, she was too violently agitated to notice
+the color that rushed into Marguerite’s face and betrayed the tumult of
+a virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By the time the old abbe was
+announced, Marguerite had taken up her sewing and appeared to give it
+such attention that she bowed to the uncle and nephew without looking at
+them. Monsieur Claes mechanically returned their salutation and left
+the room with the air of a man called away by his occupations. The good
+Dominican sat down beside Madame Claes and looked at her with one of
+those searching glances by which he penetrated the minds of others; the
+sight of Monsieur Claes and his wife was enough to make him aware of a
+catastrophe.
+
+“My children,” said the mother, “go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+Emmanuel your father’s tulips.”
+
+Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie’s arm and looked at the young
+man, who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion. When
+all four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other side,
+leaving Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young de
+Solis, led him to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the same
+manner year after year by Lemulquinier.
+
+“Do you love tulips?” asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+deep silence,--a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+
+“Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their beauties.
+They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber in which I
+live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that are softer
+to the eye.”
+
+Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it
+was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness,
+the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+
+“Do you work very hard?” she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with
+a back, painted green. “Here,” she continued, “the tulips are not so
+close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors
+are dazzling; they give pain.”
+
+“Do I work hard?” replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+smoothed the gravel with his foot. “Yes; I work at many things. My uncle
+wished to make me a priest.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+
+“I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage
+to oppose my uncle’s wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a
+poor orphan!”
+
+“What do you mean to be?” asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+gesture, “I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.”
+
+“Oh, mademoiselle,” said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender
+admiration, “except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am
+studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I
+were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to
+live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love.
+That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a
+daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold
+and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is
+emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher
+like me.”
+
+“I have always called the daisies marguerites,” she said.
+
+Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
+Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he
+feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said
+at last, “I dared not pronounce your name”--then he paused.
+
+“A teacher?” she said.
+
+“Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+taste for historical researches.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+That “ah!” so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a
+foolish laugh and said:--
+
+“You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.”
+
+“My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I
+think,” said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+
+“Your mother seems to me greatly changed,” said Emmanuel.
+
+“She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and
+we can only try to share them with her.”
+
+Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown
+to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the
+price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in
+Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when
+poverty should overtake her children. With much deliberation, and after
+weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one
+of prudence. He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which
+he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the
+estimation of others.
+
+The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with letters
+of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service
+to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the
+gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of
+eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were
+paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that
+nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to
+the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel
+de Solis was commissioned by Claes to receive the price of the pictures,
+which were thereupon packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale
+from the people of Douai.
+
+Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he
+had borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his
+chemical researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its noblest
+ornament. Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret; he felt
+so sure of repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he reserved
+the right of redemption. In Josephine’s eyes a hundred pictures were
+as nothing compared to domestic happiness and the satisfaction of her
+husband’s mind; moreover, she refilled the gallery with other paintings
+taken from the reception-rooms, and to conceal the gaps which these left
+in the front house, she changed the arrangement of the furniture.
+
+When Balthazar’s debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and his
+nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats reserved by
+Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the Dutch ducats, to
+which the events of the Continental war had given a commercial value.
+One hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were buried in the cellar of
+the house in which the abbe and his nephew resided.
+
+Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock
+he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor
+and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely
+absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken
+France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons,
+drew him from his laboratory; he was neither husband, father, nor
+citizen,--solely chemist.
+
+Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she
+was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own
+chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished
+joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her,
+she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring
+the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better suited to her
+condition. The bed in which the unfortunate woman ended her life was
+placed between the fireplace and a window looking on the garden. There
+she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of
+her young daughters, striving to leave within them the fire of her own.
+Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations, allowed maternal love
+to have its way. The mother now seemed the more delightful because her
+motherhood had blossomed late. Like all generous persons, she passed
+through sensitive phases of feeling that she mistook for remorse.
+Believing that she had defrauded her children of the tenderness that
+should have been theirs, she sought to redeem those imaginary wrongs;
+bestowing attentions and tender cares which made her precious to them;
+she longed to make her children live, as it were, within her heart; to
+shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to cherish them enough in the few
+remaining days to redeem the time during which she had neglected them.
+The sufferings of her mind gave to her words and her caresses a glowing
+warmth that issued from her soul. Her eyes caressed her children, her
+voice with its yearning intonations touched their hearts, her hand
+showered blessings on their heads.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
+received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
+the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes’s state of health seemed a
+sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband’s debts
+put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes
+to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
+occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
+completely out of people’s minds. During those two years Douai was so
+often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either
+by the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of
+the country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were
+in peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
+himself.
+
+The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
+the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
+rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
+hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength
+to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the
+same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon
+the room. The monotony of this existence was broken only on the days
+when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame
+Claes.
+
+While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
+Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
+not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
+spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
+words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them
+so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual
+understanding surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she
+was, back to the young and happy past which gave such bitterness to
+the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling
+repressed the sweet half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the
+saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively divined.
+
+No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
+nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
+which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
+and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development.
+There are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of
+Madame Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life
+has smiled; these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time
+of joy, seasons that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are
+other loves, framed in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures
+are painful, costly, burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or
+blackened by despair. The love in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel,
+as yet unknown to them for love, the sentiment that budded into life
+beneath the gloomy arches of the picture-gallery, beside the stern old
+abbe, in a still and silent moment, that love so grave and so discreet,
+yet rich in tender depths, in secret delights that were luscious to the
+taste as stolen grapes snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in
+coming years the sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its
+birth.
+
+Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
+they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
+deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
+shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
+becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium
+of communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
+supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
+hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
+distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother’s
+sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of unuttered
+promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of Raphael
+painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither avowed;
+they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not know what
+wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their heads. They
+doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow them, they
+stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to say to
+each other, “Shall we end our days together?”
+
+The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
+comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
+through Balthazar. However painful her husband’s presence might be to
+her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
+he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
+moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying woman
+would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and her
+daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they forgave
+him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some sudden
+illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
+only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
+Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
+their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of the
+being he had once so passionately loved.
+
+When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
+Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
+strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
+brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
+came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her
+cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, “My dear wife, how are
+you to-day?” she answered, “Better, dear friend,” and made him think she
+would be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great
+that he accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife
+was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his
+alone she was living.
+
+A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
+shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
+presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to
+visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two
+beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare
+intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve
+which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a time when
+even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon
+to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of separation, which
+might have killed her had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became
+so great that there were times when she was joyful in the thought that
+he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar
+in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his own way, she lived
+in the happiness she had procured for him,--a shadowy joy, and yet it
+satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced
+herself to believe it; and she glided over that icy surface, not daring
+to rest her weight upon it lest it should break and drown her soul in a
+gulf of awful nothingness.
+
+No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
+consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
+condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks
+of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
+February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the
+words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+
+“Madame,” said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+hear the conversation, “Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
+protect the future of your children.”
+
+Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
+she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
+which affected him.
+
+His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
+herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
+wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
+pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
+courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
+remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
+and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+
+Marguerite’s management of the household since her mother’s illness had
+amply fulfilled the dying woman’s hopes that Madame Claes was able to
+look upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident
+that she herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both
+women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made
+between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the
+daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes
+rested from her writing, Marguerite said: “Mother?” then she dropped as
+if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask
+the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal
+the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she
+might not see the superscription.
+
+“You can read it, my child,” said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
+
+The young girl read the words, “To my daughter Marguerite.”
+
+“We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile,” said Madame
+Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+
+Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
+hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling
+by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been
+brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months
+was professor of history and philosophy.
+
+“Dear children, we must part!” she cried. “You have never forsaken me,
+never! and he who--”
+
+She stopped.
+
+“Monsieur Emmanuel,” said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother’s
+face, “go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse.”
+
+Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
+urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, “I will come.”
+
+“Emmanuel,” said Madame Claes when he returned to her, “take my
+sons away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
+sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand.”
+
+When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
+understood her and sent Felicie away.
+
+“I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma,” said Marguerite
+who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased
+the wound Pierquin had given. “I have had no money for the household
+expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months’ wages to the
+servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
+dare to do so. You don’t know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
+gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?”
+
+“He never told me!” exclaimed Madame Claes. “My God! thou callest me to
+thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?”
+
+She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
+eyes.
+
+“Marguerite,” she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, “here is
+a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death,
+when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are
+without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but
+take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few
+hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be economical.
+Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,--and it
+may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret
+whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will
+no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it of you,--should that time
+come, treat him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile
+the interests of which you will be the sole protector with the duty
+which you owe to a father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness
+and his life to the glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act,
+his intentions are noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him
+once more kind and affectionate--YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say
+these words to you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften
+the anguish of my death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside
+your father; to cause him no grief; never to reproach him; never to
+condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate guardian of the home until--his
+work accomplished--he is again the master of his family.”
+
+“I understand you, dear mother,” said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+eyelids of the dying woman. “I will do as you wish.”
+
+“Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
+management of the property and the household. If you married, your
+husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
+family and disturb your father’s life.”
+
+Marguerite looked at her mother and said, “Have you nothing else to say
+to me about my marriage?”
+
+“Can you hesitate, my child?” cried the dying woman in alarm.
+
+“No,” the daughter answered; “I promise to obey you.”
+
+“Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you,” said the mother,
+shedding hot tears. “Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
+Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
+guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
+sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
+him--too much.”
+
+She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
+gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
+violent.
+
+A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
+and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
+ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
+looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
+
+“Where is my husband?”
+
+Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
+uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
+spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
+through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
+
+“Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
+last sacraments,” she cried with the violence of indignation.
+
+“I am coming,” answered Balthazar.
+
+Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
+him. Madame Claes’s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband
+did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered,
+Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+“Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?” she said to him with an angelic
+tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+
+“I have done it!” he cried joyfully; “Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
+principle of--”
+
+A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
+
+“What did they tell me?” he demanded. “Are you worse? What is the
+matter?”
+
+“This is the matter, monsieur,” whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
+at his conduct; “your wife is dying, and you have killed her.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
+went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
+Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
+tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+“You are dying, and I have killed you!” he said. “What does he mean?”
+
+“My husband,” she answered, “I only lived in your love, and you have
+taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.”
+
+“Leave us,” said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
+“Have I for one moment ceased to love you?” he went on, sitting down
+beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+
+“My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I have
+not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
+full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are
+not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
+functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to
+all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married
+days; such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen
+into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence unlimited, the tender
+habits of affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in
+time: we live together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions
+from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word,
+one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet, you have sold your last
+pictures, you have sold even the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing
+money on your property, and have said no word to me. Ah! I go from
+life weary of life. If you are doing wrong, if you delude yourself in
+following the unattainable, have I not shown you that my love could
+share your faults, could walk beside you and be happy, though you led me
+in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,--that was my glory; it is
+now my death. Balthazar, my illness has lasted long; it began on the
+day when here, in this place where I am about to die, you showed me that
+Science was more to you than Family. And now the end has come; your wife
+is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune and wife were yours,--you could
+do what you willed with your own; but on the day of my death my property
+goes to my children, and you cannot touch it; what will then become of
+you? I am telling you the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far;
+when I am gone will anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now
+your life? If you have sacrificed your wife, your children will count
+but little in the scale; for I must be just and own you loved me
+above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have cast into the
+gulf,--and what have you found?”
+
+At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
+face.
+
+“Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children,” continued the
+dying woman. “You are called in derision ‘Claes the alchemist’; soon
+it will be ‘Claes the madman.’ For myself, I believe in you. I know
+you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is
+mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy
+with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be ruined.
+I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me consolation for
+my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let
+me be certain that my children will not want for bread--Ah, nothing,
+nothing, not even you, can calm my fears.”
+
+“I swear,” said Claes, “to--”
+
+“No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath,” she said,
+interrupting him. “You owed us your protection; we have been without it
+seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither wife
+nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His virtues
+are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot
+belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about
+him, like a majestic tree--and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the
+height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for this last day
+to tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings
+of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo
+in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead,
+dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her
+joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But
+those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my
+anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!”
+
+“Lemulquinier!” cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+
+The old man appeared.
+
+“Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be careful,
+but destroy all. I renounce Science,” he said to his wife.
+
+“Too late,” she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. “Marguerite!” she
+cried, feeling herself about to die.
+
+Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
+saw her mother’s eyes now glazing.
+
+“MARGUERITE!” repeated the dying woman.
+
+The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
+bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
+forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
+
+Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
+foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
+virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
+Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter
+judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his
+daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love with
+which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to
+her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must ever
+hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his attendant
+genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion, denying him the
+strength to carry his repentance into action: he feared himself.
+
+When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
+minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
+The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
+woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to
+enter it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
+hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
+the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by
+ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers, anathematizes those
+who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion (the hypocrite!) in
+weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+
+The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a
+few flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist,
+doing homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and
+spades. Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,--the fi, fo, fum of
+collective grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with
+neither more nor less of feeling, at all hours and in every town in
+France,--they proceeded to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin
+was the first to observe that the death of this excellent woman was
+a mercy, for her husband had made her unhappy; and it was even more
+fortunate for her children: she was unable while living to refuse her
+money to the husband she adored; but now that she was dead, Claes was
+debarred from touching it. Thereupon all present calculated the fortune
+of that poor Madame Claes, wondered how much she had laid by (had she,
+in fact, laid by anything?), made an inventory of her jewels, rummaged
+in her wardrobe, peeped into her drawers, while the afflicted family
+were still weeping and praying around her death-bed.
+
+Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes’s possessions
+in her own right--to use the notarial phrase--might still be recovered,
+and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of francs; basing
+this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,--whose timber, counting
+the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval growths, and the recent
+plantations, had immensely increased in value during the last twelve
+years,--and partly on Balthazar’s own property, of which enough remained
+to “cover” the claims of his children, if the liquidation of their
+mother’s fortune did not yield sufficient to release him. Mademoiselle
+Claes was still, in Pierquin’s slang, “a four-hundred-thousand-franc
+girl.” “But,” he added, “if she doesn’t marry,--a step which would
+of course separate her interests and permit us to sell the forest and
+auction, and so realize the property of the minor children and reinvest
+it where the father can’t lay hands on it,--Claes is likely to ruin them
+all.”
+
+Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy to
+win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the lawyer the
+compliment of suggesting that he might be the man. Pierquin, however,
+found so many good reasons to reject the suggested matches as unworthy
+of Marguerite’s position, that the confabulators glanced at each
+other and smiled, and took malicious pleasure in prolonging this truly
+provincial method of annoyance. Pierquin had already decided that Madame
+Claes’s death would have a favorable effect upon his suit, and he began
+mentally to cut up the body in his own interests.
+
+“That good woman,” he said to himself as he went home to bed, “was as
+proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey,
+hey! why couldn’t I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere
+Claes is drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after
+convincing Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her
+brothers and sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be glad
+to get rid of a girl who is likely to thwart him.”
+
+He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded for
+his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the provinces
+there was certainly not a better brought-up or more delicately lovely
+young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her grace, were like
+those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to name lest he
+should betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments were lofty, her
+principles religious, she would undoubtedly make him a faithful wife:
+moreover, she not only flattered the vanity which influences every man
+more or less in the choice of a wife, but she gratified his pride by
+the high consideration which her family, doubly ennobled, enjoyed in
+Flanders,--a consideration which her husband of course would share.
+
+The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several
+thousand-franc notes, which he offered with great friendliness to
+Balthazar, so as to relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst
+of his grief. Touched by this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he
+thought, praise his goodness and his personal qualities to Marguerite.
+In this he was mistaken. Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was
+a very natural action, and their sorrow was too absorbing to let them
+even think of the lawyer.
+
+Balthazar’s despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed
+to blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,--less
+on account of the Science which might have excused him, than for
+the remorse which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by
+appearances: it takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic
+worth of the article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species
+of enjoyment, which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its
+thirst for emotions it acquits without judging the man who raises a
+laugh, or he who makes it weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+
+Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority with
+docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of her skin,
+just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the gentleness
+and patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs of feminine
+courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels appointed to shed
+peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving palms. But although
+she trained herself, through a premature perception of duty, to hide her
+personal grief, it was none the less bitter; her calm exterior was not
+in keeping with the deep trouble of her thoughts, and she was destined
+to undergo, too early in life, those terrible outbursts of feeling
+which no heart is wholly able to subdue: her father was to hold her
+incessantly under the pressure of natural youthful generosity on the one
+hand, and the dictates of imperious duty on the other. The cares which
+came upon her the very day of her mother’s death threw her into a
+struggle with the interests of life at an age when young girls are
+thinking only of its pleasures. Dreadful discipline of suffering, which
+is never lacking to angelic natures!
+
+The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few days
+after Madame Claes’s death he took occasion to speak to Marguerite, and
+began operations with a cleverness which might have succeeded if
+love had not given her the power of clear insight and saved her from
+mistaking appearances that were all the more specious because Pierquin
+displayed his natural kindheartedness,--the kindliness of a notary who
+thinks himself loving while he protects a client’s money. Relying on
+his rather distant relationship and his constant habit of managing the
+business and sharing the secrets of the Claes family, sure of the
+esteem and friendship of the father, greatly assisted by the careless
+inattention of that servant of science who took no thought for the
+marriage of his daughter, and not suspecting that Marguerite could
+prefer another,--Pierquin unguardedly enabled her to form a judgment
+on a suit in which there was no passion except that of self-interest,
+always odious to a young soul, and which he was not clever enough to
+conceal. It was he who on this occasion was naively above-board, it was
+she who dissimulated,--simply because he thought he was dealing with a
+defenceless girl, and wholly misconceived the privileges of weakness.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking about
+the paths of the little garden, “you know my heart, you understand how
+truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which absorb you at this
+moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart
+only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I
+would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I
+suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant
+with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much
+about you during the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal
+delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister and your own are in
+jeopardy. Do you wish to save your family from complete ruin?”
+
+“What must I do?” she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+
+“Marry,” answered Pierquin.
+
+“I shall not marry,” she said.
+
+“Yes, you will marry,” replied the notary, “when you have soberly
+thought over the critical position in which you are placed.”
+
+“How can my marriage save--”
+
+“Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin,” he exclaimed,
+interrupting her. “Marriage will emancipate you.”
+
+“Why should I be emancipated?” asked Marguerite.
+
+“Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your property,
+my dear little cousin,” said the lawyer in a tone of triumph. “If you
+marry you take your share of your mother’s property. To give it to you,
+the whole property must be liquidated; to do that, it becomes necessary
+to sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the proceeds will be
+capitalized, and your father, as guardian, will be compelled to invest
+the fortune of his children in such a way that Chemistry can’t get hold
+of it.”
+
+“And if I do not marry, what will happen?” she asked.
+
+“Well,” said the notary, “your father will manage your estate as he
+pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the timber
+of the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as the little
+Saint Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred thousand
+francs; but from one day to another you are not sure your father won’t
+cut it down, and then your thirteen hundred acres are not worth three
+hundred thousand francs. Isn’t it better to avoid this almost certain
+danger by at once compelling the division of property on your marriage?
+If the forest is sold now, while Chemistry has gone to sleep, your
+father will put the proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The Funds are at
+59; those dear children will get nearly five thousand francs a year for
+every fifty thousand francs: and, inasmuch as the property of minors
+cannot be sold out, your brothers and sister will find their fortunes
+doubled in value by the time they come of age. Whereas, in the other
+case,--faith, no one knows what may happen: your father has already
+impaired your mother’s property; we shall find out the deficit when we
+come to make the inventory. If he is in debt to her estate, you will
+take a mortgage on his, and in that way something may be recovered--”
+
+“For shame!” said Marguerite. “It would be an outrage on my father.
+It is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have
+forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children,” she
+continued, giving way to tears of distress. “You misunderstand him,
+Monsieur Pierquin.”
+
+“But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry--”
+
+“We are ruined; is that what you mean?”
+
+“Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite,” he said, taking her hand
+which he placed upon his heart, “I should fail of my duty if I did not
+persist in this matter. Your interests alone--”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, “the true
+interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so.”
+
+“Cousin,” he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+escaping him, “you commit suicide; you fling your mother’s property into
+a gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know not
+how I love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball, three
+years ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it speaks
+to you of your own interests, Marguerite.” He paused. “Yes, we must call
+a family council and emancipate you--without consulting you,” he added.
+
+“But what is it to be emancipated?”
+
+“It is to enjoy your own rights.”
+
+“If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+marry? and whom should I marry?”
+
+Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money, that
+Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised tenderness.
+
+“You would marry the person who--pleases you--the most,” he said. “A
+husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business. You are
+now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him all
+alone?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister when
+the time comes.”
+
+“Pshaw! the obstinate creature,” thought Pierquin. “No, you will not
+resist him,” he said aloud.
+
+“Let us end the subject,” she said.
+
+“Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I
+will prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster
+which all the town foresees.”
+
+“I thank you for the interest you take in me,” she answered; “but I
+entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+pain to my father.”
+
+Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring,
+his glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry
+in which Emmanuel’s sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be said,
+or what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose effects
+never deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the passionate
+gestures of a lover may be imitated; a young girl can be deluded by a
+clever comedian; but to succeed, the man must be alone in the field.
+If the young girl has another soul beside her whose pulses vibrate in
+unison with hers, she is able to distinguish the expressions of a true
+love. Emmanuel, like Marguerite, felt the influence of the chords which,
+from the time of their first meeting had gathered ominously about their
+heads, hiding from their eyes the blue skies of love. His feeling for
+the Elect of his heart was an idolatry which the total absence of hope
+rendered gentle and mysterious in its manifestations. Socially too far
+removed from Mademoiselle Claes by his want of fortune, with nothing but
+a noble name to offer her, he saw no chance of ever being her husband.
+Yet he had always hoped for certain encouragements which Marguerite
+refused to give before the failing eyes of her dying mother. Both
+equally pure, they had never said to one another a word of love. Their
+joys were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They trembled apart,
+though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope. They
+seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged
+to the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the
+sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love
+that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed
+in each other’s hearts that both were ready to make the greatest
+sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could
+expect to taste.
+
+Since Madame Claes’s death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
+The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first,
+were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears. Marguerite’s
+reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by
+her mother. With more freedom of action, she nevertheless became more
+distant. Emmanuel shared his beloved’s grief, comprehending that the
+slightest word or wish of love at such a time transgressed the laws
+of the heart. Their love was therefore more concealed than it had ever
+been. These tender souls sounded the same note: held apart by grief, as
+formerly by the timidities of youth and by respect for the sufferings of
+the mother, they clung to the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute
+eloquence of devoted actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine
+harmonies of youth, the first steps of a love still in its infancy.
+Emmanuel came every morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he
+never entered the dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring
+a letter from Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in.
+His first glance at the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic
+thoughts; it told her that he suffered under these conventional
+restraints, that he never left her, he was always with her, he shared
+her grief. He shed the tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear
+one by a look that was marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart
+lived so completely in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness
+which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached
+herself for not generously holding out her hand and saying, “Let us at
+least be friends.”
+
+Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting
+patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the
+multitude when judging of women. He believed that the words marriage,
+freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and
+flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her
+coldness was mere dissimulation. But surround her as he would with
+gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man
+accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families with a high
+hand. He discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to
+his profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving
+behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity. His
+tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped his feigned melancholy at the
+door when he put on his overshoes, or took his umbrella. He used the
+tone his long intimacy authorized as an instrument to work himself still
+further into the bosom of the family, and bring Marguerite to a marriage
+which the whole town was beginning to foresee. The true, devoted,
+respectful love formed a striking contrast to its selfish, calculating
+semblance. Each man’s conduct was homogenous: one feigned a passion and
+seized every advantage to gain the prize; the other hid his love and
+trembled lest he should betray his devotion.
+
+Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the
+same day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom she
+had any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which she
+was condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to those who
+might think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a fine morning
+in April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur Claes was going
+out. The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to Balthazar that he
+spent part of every day in walking about the ramparts. Emmanuel made a
+motion as if to follow him, then he hesitated, seemed to gather up his
+courage, looked at Marguerite and remained. The young girl felt sure
+that he wished to speak with her, and asked him to go into the garden;
+then she sent Felicie to Martha, who was sewing in the antechamber on
+the upper floor, and seated herself on a garden-seat in full view of her
+sister and the old duenna.
+
+“Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by science,”
+ began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed the
+court-yard. “Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man who has
+lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he gazes
+without seeing anything.”
+
+“Every sorrow has its own expression,” said Marguerite, checking her
+tears. “What is it you wish to say to me?” she added after a pause,
+coldly and with dignity.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, “I scarcely
+know if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think only
+of my desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a teacher
+to be interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother Gabriel is over
+fifteen; he is in the second class; it is now necessary to direct his
+studies in the line of whatever future career he may take up. It is for
+your father to decide what that career shall be: if he gives the matter
+no thought, the injury to Gabriel would be serious. But then, again,
+would it not mortify your father if you showed him that he is neglecting
+his son’s interests? Under these circumstances, could you not yourself
+consult Gabriel as to his tastes, and help him to choose a career, so
+that later, if his father should think of making him a public officer,
+an administrator, a soldier, he might be prepared with some special
+training? I do not suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish
+to bring Gabriel up in idleness.”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Marguerite; “when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often
+said we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel ought
+to have a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me, what
+career is best for a man to choose?”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, “Gabriel is
+at the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the
+Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge
+which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can
+choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus,
+without compromising his future, you will have saved a great deal of
+time. Men who leave the Ecole with honors are sought after on all sides;
+the school turns out statesmen, diplomats, men of science, engineers,
+generals, sailors, magistrates, manufacturers, and bankers. There is
+nothing extraordinary in the son of a rich or noble family preparing
+himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on this course I shall ask you
+to--will you grant my request? Say yes!”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Let me be his tutor,” he answered, trembling.
+
+Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and
+said, “Yes”--and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:--
+
+“How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have
+thought for us. I thank you.”
+
+Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not to
+show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to his
+eyes.
+
+“I will bring both boys to see you,” he said, when he was a little
+calmer; “to-morrow is a holiday.”
+
+He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when
+he had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door of
+the dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+
+After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had
+sat that morning.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said to Balthazar, “I have come to-night to talk
+to you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your
+wife.”
+
+“I keep no account of time,” said Balthazar, wiping away the tears that
+came at the word “decease.”
+
+“Oh, monsieur!” cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, “how can you?”
+
+“But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the limits
+of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you and your
+co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he must
+make an inventory of his property within forty-five days of his wife’s
+decease, so as to render in his accounts at the end of that time. It is
+necessary to know the value of his property before deciding whether to
+accept it as sufficient security, or whether we must fall back on the
+legal rights of minors.”
+
+Marguerite rose.
+
+“Do not go away, my dear cousin,” continued Pierquin; “my words concern
+you--you and your father both. You know how truly I share your grief,
+but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If you do not,
+every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am only doing my
+duty as the family lawyer.”
+
+“He is right,” said Claes.
+
+“The time expires in two days,” resumed Pierquin; “and I must begin the
+inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the legacy-tax
+which the public treasurer will come here and demand. Treasurers have no
+hearts; they don’t trouble themselves about feelings; they fasten their
+claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore for the next two days my clerk
+and I will be here from ten till four with Monsieur Raparlier, the
+public appraiser. After we get through the town property we shall go
+into the country. As for the forest of Waignies, we shall be obliged to
+hold a consultation about that. Now let us turn to another matter.
+We must call a family council and appoint a guardian to protect the
+interests of the minor children. Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your
+nearest relative; but he has now become a Belgian. You ought,” continued
+Pierquin, addressing Balthazar, “to write to him on this matter; you can
+then find out if he has any intention of settling in France, where he
+has a fine property. Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to
+move into French Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making
+up the council with the other near relatives.”
+
+“What is the use of an inventory?” asked Marguerite.
+
+“To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts
+and its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family council,
+acting on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it sees fit.”
+
+“Pierquin,” said Claes, rising from the bench, “do all that is necessary
+to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the distress
+of selling the things that belonged to my dear--” he was unable to
+continue; but he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of such deep
+feeling that Marguerite took her father’s hand and kissed it.
+
+“To-morrow, then,” said Pierquin.
+
+“Come to breakfast,” said Claes; then he seemed to gather his scattered
+senses together and exclaimed: “But in my marriage contract, which was
+drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from the obligation
+of making an inventory, in order that she might not be annoyed by it: it
+is very probable that I was equally released--”
+
+“Oh, what happiness!” cried Marguerite. “It would have been so
+distressing to us.”
+
+“Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow,” said the
+notary, rather confused.
+
+“Then you did not know of this?” said Marguerite.
+
+This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused
+to continue it after the young girl’s comment.
+
+“The devil is in it!” he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+“That man’s wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of
+time,--just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions
+against him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those
+children. I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding
+with old Conyncks, and here’s the end of it! I shall lose ground with
+Marguerite, for she will certainly ask her father why I wanted an
+inventory of the property, which she now sees was not necessary; and
+Claes will tell her that notaries have a passion for writing documents,
+that we are lawyers above all, above cousins or friends or relatives,
+and all such stuff as that.”
+
+He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+themselves by sensitiveness.
+
+Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore, was
+done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the matter
+of property.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis,
+worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the
+necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and
+Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father’s
+country place as a measure of economy. Monsieur Claes attended to his
+business affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a considerable sum of
+money on his property, and went to see the forest at Waignies.
+
+About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him
+a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he
+was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely
+against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he
+forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it.
+Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his
+researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled his
+passion which soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he was
+really bound not to continue his researches, and remembered that his
+wife had refused his oath. Though he had pledged his word to himself
+that he would never pursue the solution of the great Problem, might he
+not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw success? He
+was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant idea contracts a
+certain peevish fixedness which is the first stage of monomania.
+
+Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace
+which Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries
+and scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of
+various countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists themselves,
+towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted to the higher
+sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat, electricity, galvanism,
+magnetism were all different effects of the same cause, and that the
+difference existing between substances hitherto considered simple must
+be produced by varying proportions of an unknown principle. The fear
+that some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals and
+discover the constituent principle of electricity,--two achievements
+which would lead to the solution of the chemical Absolute,--increased
+what the people of Douai called a mania, and drove his desires to a
+paroxysm conceivable to those who devote themselves to the sciences, or
+who have ever known the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion all
+the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite,
+who watched every evidence of her father’s state of mind, opened the
+long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+which her mother’s death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+re-awaking her father’s grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She determined
+to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its distractions.
+Several good marriages were proposed to her, which occupied Claes’s
+mind, but to all of them she replied that she should not marry until
+after she was twenty-five. But in spite of his daughter’s efforts, in
+spite of his remorseful struggles, Balthazar, at the beginning of the
+winter, returned secretly to his researches. It was difficult, however,
+to hide his operations from the inquisitive women in the kitchen; and
+one morning Martha, while dressing Marguerite, said to her:--
+
+“Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier--who
+is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the
+cross--has gone back to the garret. There’s monsieur on the high-road to
+hell. Pray God he mayn’t kill you as he killed my poor mistress.”
+
+“It is not possible!” exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+“Come and see the signs of their traffic.”
+
+Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
+the flue of the laboratory.
+
+“I shall be twenty-one in a few months,” she thought, “and I shall know
+how to oppose the destruction of our property.”
+
+In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
+for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
+happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
+more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in
+his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man
+profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked
+night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know
+how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+
+Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of
+a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
+noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
+necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
+left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went
+to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters
+without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs
+they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss
+him on both cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great domestic
+misfortunes had Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the authority
+of a mother, and if, moreover, she were not protected by a secret love
+from the dangers of so much liberty.
+
+Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+would soon be complete. Balthazar’s rural estates, which yielded sixteen
+thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
+now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
+francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed
+a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
+interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who
+is the slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to
+Marguerite for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated
+that three years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the
+law would step in and eat up all that Balthazar had not squandered.
+Marguerite’s coldness brought Pierquin to a state of almost hostile
+indifference. To give himself an appearance in the eyes of the world of
+having renounced her hand, he frequently remarked of the Claes family in
+a tone of compassion:--
+
+“Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well,
+it can’t be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal means
+which might have rescued them from poverty.”
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in Douai,
+thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits which made
+him worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two young girls,
+who called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as their father had
+gone to bed. Emmanuel’s gentle rap at the street-door was never missing.
+For the last three months, encouraged by the gracious, though mute
+gratitude with which Marguerite now accepted his attentions, he became
+at his ease, and was seen for what he was. The brightness of his pure
+spirit shone like a flawless diamond; Marguerite learned to understand
+its strength and its constancy when she saw how inexhaustible was the
+source from which it came. She loved to watch the unfolding, one by one,
+of the blossoms of his heart, whose perfume she had already breathed.
+Each day Emmanuel realized some one of Marguerite’s hopes, and illumined
+the enchanted regions of love with new lights that chased away the
+clouds and brought to view the serene heavens, giving color to the
+fruitful riches hidden away in the shadow of their lives. More at his
+ease, the young man could display the seductive qualities of his heart
+until now discreetly hidden, the expansive gaiety of his age, the
+simplicity which comes of a life of study, the treasures of a delicate
+mind that life has not adulterated, the innocent joyousness which goes
+so well with loving youth. His soul and Marguerite’s understood each
+other better; they went together to the depths of their hearts and
+found in each the same thoughts,--pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh
+harmonies like those the legends tell of beneath the waves, which
+fascinate the divers. They made themselves known to one another by an
+interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs,
+in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but
+not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the
+sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of anguish
+and renunciation on which she had entered. This artless, progressive
+love was her support. In all his testimonies of affection Emmanuel
+showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet yet subtile mind
+which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of a diamond
+relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,--adorable
+wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the
+artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with
+novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it
+is an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to
+a woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her heart and yet
+not blight it. The more Emmanuel was free to utter himself, the more
+charming were the expressions of his love.
+
+“I have tried to get here before Pierquin,” he said to Marguerite one
+evening. “He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it from
+me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at Waignies
+to speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are already
+felled, and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three
+hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price,
+which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off
+his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand
+francs of the three hundred thousand still due to him on the
+purchase-money.”
+
+Pierquin entered at this moment.
+
+“Ah! my dear cousin,” he said, “you are ruined. I told you how it
+would be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an insatiable
+appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your family
+guardian, Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam, and Claes
+has seized the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all wrong. I have
+written to Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too late; everything
+will be squandered. You will be obliged to sue your father. The suit
+can’t be long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur Conyncks has no
+alternative but to institute proceedings; the law requires it. This
+is the result of your obstinacy. Do you now see my prudence, and how
+devoted I was to your interests?”
+
+“I bring you some good news, mademoiselle,” said young de Solis in his
+gentle voice. “Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. The
+difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed.”
+
+Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:--
+
+“My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+Gabriel’s outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard,” she
+added, kissing her sister’s forehead.
+
+“To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days,” said
+Emmanuel; “he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November.”
+
+“My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing,” said the lawyer, eyeing
+the professor from head to foot; “for he will have to make his own way.
+But, my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of the
+family: will you listen to what I say this time?”
+
+“No,” she said, “not if it relates to marriage.”
+
+“Then what will you do?”
+
+“I?--nothing.”
+
+“But you are of age.”
+
+“I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me,” she
+added, “which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+father and to the honor of the family?”
+
+“My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+does, I will call again.”
+
+“Adieu, monsieur,” said Marguerite.
+
+“The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself,” thought the notary.
+“Adieu, mademoiselle,” he said aloud. “Monsieur, my respects to you”;
+and he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+
+“I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have
+consulted an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle,” said
+Emmanuel, in a hesitating voice. “If you will allow me, I will go
+to Amsterdam to-morrow and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear
+Marguerite--”
+
+He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile and
+a tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He paused,
+looking at Felicie and Martha.
+
+“Speak before my sister,” said Marguerite. “She is so docile and
+courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned
+to our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see
+for herself how necessary courage is to us.”
+
+The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew some
+pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+
+“Leave us, Martha.”
+
+“Dear Marguerite,” said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of
+his voice, “I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers
+who still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled
+timber. To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name
+of Monsieur Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an
+injunction upon them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will have
+returned, the family council can be called together, and Gabriel put
+in possession of his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and your
+brother being thus authorized to use those rights, you will demand your
+share in the proceeds of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot refuse you
+the two hundred thousand francs on which the injunction will have been
+put; as to the remaining hundred thousand which is due to you, you
+must obtain a mortgage on this house. Monsieur Conyncks will demand
+securities for the three hundred thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean.
+Under these circumstances your father will be obliged to mortgage his
+property on the plain of Orchies, which he has already encumbered to the
+amount of three hundred thousand francs. The law gives a retrospective
+priority to the claims of minors; and that will save you. Monsieur
+Claes’s hands will be tied for the future; your property becomes
+inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his own estates because they
+will be held as security for other sums. Moreover, the whole can be
+done quietly, without scandal or legal proceedings. Your father will be
+forced to greater prudence in making his researches, even if he cannot
+be persuaded to relinquish them altogether.”
+
+“Yes,” said Marguerite, “but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain a
+mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live
+here. The proceeds of my father’s property in the country will pay the
+interest on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but how
+are we to live?”
+
+“In the first place,” said Emmanuel, “by investing the fifty thousand
+francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get,
+according to present rates, more than four thousand francs’ income,
+which will suffice to pay your brother’s board and lodging and all his
+other expenses in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is of
+age, therefore you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it, and
+you will have one expense the less. Besides, you will have your own
+fifty thousand.”
+
+“My father will ask me for them,” she said in a frightened tone; “and I
+shall not be able to refuse him.”
+
+“Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing yourself.
+Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel’s name: it will bring you
+twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who are emancipated
+cannot sell property without permission of the family council; you will
+thus gain three years’ peace of mind. By that time your father will
+either have solved his problem or renounced it; and Gabriel, then of
+age, will reinvest the money in your own name.”
+
+Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which she
+did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see this
+pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought with him
+to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of
+minors; she quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural
+penetration of women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+
+Gabriel came home to his father’s house on the following day. When
+Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his admission
+to the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor with a wave
+of his hand, and said:--
+
+“I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science.”
+
+“Oh, my brother,” cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+laboratory, “work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass your
+time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits which
+ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly three
+thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for your
+pocket-money; that is surely enough.”
+
+“I will answer for him,” said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on his
+pupil’s shoulder.
+
+A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite,
+had obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely
+proposed by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to
+face with the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense
+of honor allowed no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the
+timber to which he had consented at a moment when he was harassed by
+creditors, submitted to all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair the
+almost involuntary wrong that he had done to his children, he signed the
+deeds in a preoccupied way. He was now as careless and improvident as a
+Negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop of brandy, and cries
+for her at night. He gave no thought to even the immediate future, and
+never asked himself what resources he would have when his last ducat was
+melted up. He pursued his work and continued his purchases, apparently
+unaware that he was now no more than the titular owner of his house and
+lands, and that he could not, thanks to the severity of the laws, raise
+another penny upon a property of which he was now, as it were, the legal
+guardian.
+
+The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters
+paid the costs of Jean’s education and met all the expenses of the
+household out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum placed
+in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel’s name, which he punctually remitted to
+them. Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in December of that
+year.
+
+Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house,
+and all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and
+forks that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and
+these she now ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day
+Marguerite had kept silence towards her father on the subject of his
+depredations, but that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to
+leave her alone with him, and when he seated himself as usual by the
+corner of the parlor fireplace, she said:--
+
+“My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything,
+even your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I am
+forced to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely enough
+to live on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night and day to
+pay for the schooling of little Jean with the price of the lace dress
+we are now making. My dear father, I implore you to give up your
+researches.”
+
+“You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished;
+I shall have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved
+undiscoverable. You will have millions--”
+
+“Give us meanwhile the bread to eat,” replied Marguerite.
+
+“Bread? is there no bread here?” said Claes, with a frightened air. “No
+bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?”
+
+“You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been
+cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies,
+the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have
+borrowed--”
+
+“Then what are we living on?” he demanded.
+
+Marguerite held up her needle and continued:--
+
+“Gabriel’s income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both ends
+meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that
+I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think
+I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for
+potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me.”
+
+“My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders.”
+
+“It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
+everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain
+from making debts.”
+
+“I don’t wish to make any more!” he said.
+
+“Any more?” she cried, “then you have some?”
+
+“Mere trifles,” he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+
+For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
+lowering of her father’s character, and suffered from it so much that
+she dared not question him.
+
+A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
+the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
+amount, falling due in consecutive months.
+
+“All is over!” cried Marguerite, “the time has come.”
+
+She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+steps, talking to herself:--
+
+“A hundred thousand francs!” she cried. “I must find them, or see my
+father in prison. What am I to do?”
+
+Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
+the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
+brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
+here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
+products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
+pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
+and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
+upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure
+of Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a
+workman, his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered
+it. His eyes were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough.
+The receiver of this instrument was covered with a lens made of
+double convex glasses, the space between the glasses being filled
+with alchohol, which focussed the light coming through one of the
+compartments of the rose-window of the garret. The shelf of the receiver
+communicated with the wire of an immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier,
+busy at the moment in moving the pedestal of the machine, which was
+placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens in a perpendicular
+direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his face black with
+dust, and called out,--
+
+“Ha! mademoiselle, don’t come in.”
+
+The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument,
+and receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads
+of silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
+strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
+of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring,
+all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,--
+
+“He is mad!”
+
+Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, “Send away
+Lemulquinier.”
+
+“No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
+has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
+for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
+complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
+At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
+about to show results which I alone--”
+
+“My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
+paying your notes of hand--”
+
+“Wait, wait!”
+
+“Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
+francs by four o’clock.”
+
+“Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
+this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I
+could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful.”
+
+He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
+rolled from his eyes.
+
+“Monsieur is quite right,” said Lemulquinier; “it is all the fault of
+that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!”
+
+Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+
+“Leave us, Mulquinier,” she said.
+
+“Ah! I see a new experiment!” cried Claes.
+
+“Father, lay aside your experiments,” said his daughter, when they were
+alone. “You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not
+a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will
+become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs
+and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow
+it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful
+to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our
+position; see reason at last!”
+
+“Madness!” cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his
+luminous eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and
+repeated the word “Madness!” so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+
+“Ah!” he cried, “your mother would never have uttered that word to me.
+She was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned
+a science to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human
+race; she knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The
+feelings of a loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial
+affection. Yes, Love is above all other feelings. See reason!” he went
+on, striking his breast. “Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say
+we are poor; well, my daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your father,
+obey me. I will make you rich when I please. Your fortune? it is a
+pittance! When I find the solvent of carbon I will fill your parlor
+with diamonds, and they are but a scintilla of what I seek. You can well
+afford to wait while I consume my life in superhuman efforts.”
+
+“Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you have
+already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of
+my mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him,
+doubtless, as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to him,
+as she sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving myself
+wholly to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling you to
+render an account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past and
+think of the present. I am here now to represent the necessity which you
+have created for yourself. You must have money to meet your notes--do
+you understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but the portrait
+of your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of my mother, who
+felt herself too feeble to defend her children against their father;
+she ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my brothers and my
+sister; I come, father, in the name of all the Claes, and I command
+you to give up your experiments, or earn the means of pursuing them
+hereafter, if pursue them you must. If you arm yourself with the power
+of your paternity, which you employ only for our destruction, I have on
+my side your ancestors and your honor, whose voice is louder than that
+of chemistry. The Family is greater than Science. I have been too long
+your daughter.”
+
+“And you choose to be my executioner,” he said, in a feeble voice.
+
+Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
+she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother’s voice
+saying to her, “Do not oppose your father too much; love him well.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+“Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder,” said
+Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. “We were
+just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap
+of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he’s almost in the shoes
+of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT,” he said to Josette,
+clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, “of getting hold of the
+Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about
+notes of hand.”
+
+“Well, pay them yourself,” said Martha, “out of your wages.”
+
+“Where’s the butter for my bread?” said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+
+“Where’s the money to buy it?” she answered, sharply. “Come, old
+villain, if you make gold in that devil’s kitchen of yours, why don’t
+you make butter? ‘Twouldn’t be half so difficult, and you could sell it
+in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The
+young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to
+be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won’t spend more than one
+hundred francs a month for the whole household. There’s only one dinner
+for all. If you want dainties you’ve got your furnaces upstairs where
+you fricassee pearls till there’s nothing else talked of in town. Get
+your roast chickens up there.”
+
+Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+
+“He will go and buy something to eat with his own money,” said Martha;
+“all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn’t he stingy, the old
+scarecrow!”
+
+“Starve him! that’s the only way to manage him,” said Josette. “For a
+week past he hasn’t rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
+he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the
+present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on
+them, I can tell him that.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Martha, “I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
+wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking
+a Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he’d be burned
+alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa.”
+
+Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
+gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother’s letter, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+
+Josephine.
+
+
+To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
+uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
+entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
+children should present the paper.
+
+“Martha,” cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; “go to
+Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble, discreet
+heart! he never told me,” she thought; “though all my griefs and cares
+are his, he never told me!”
+
+Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+
+“You have kept a secret from me,” she said, showing him her mother’s
+letter.
+
+Emmanuel bent his head.
+
+“Marguerite, are you in great trouble?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” she answered; “be my support,--you, whom my mother calls ‘our
+good Emmanuel.’” She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
+knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+
+“My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
+saw you in the gallery,” he said; “but I scarcely dared to hope the time
+might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know
+my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your
+mother’s wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.”
+
+“You have saved us,” she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
+go down to the parlor.
+
+After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
+found themselves.
+
+“I must pay those notes at once,” said Emmanuel. “If Merkstus holds them
+all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
+seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
+ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.”
+
+“Oh!” she said, “bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
+asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me.
+Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!” she said, weeping
+and resting her forehead against the young man’s heart.
+
+This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
+protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
+melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full,
+was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+
+“What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live in
+that garret, where the air is stifling.”
+
+“What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
+‘My kingdom for a horse’?” said Emmanuel. “He is pitiless; and in that
+you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
+fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours
+nor his.”
+
+“Give him my fortune?” she said, pressing her lover’s hand and looking
+at him with ardor in her eyes; “you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told a
+hundred lies to make me keep it!”
+
+“Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,” he said. “Sometimes I long for
+you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
+you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+grandeurs of wealth can separate us.”
+
+“Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.”
+
+“Ourselves!” he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+“The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.”
+
+“It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head.
+To reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
+consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he
+has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
+the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
+fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?”
+
+“Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
+for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
+you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
+ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
+nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.”
+
+“My poor mother is happy,” said Marguerite; “she would have suffered
+a thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.”
+
+“There is an end,” said Emmanuel. “When you have nothing left, Monsieur
+Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.”
+
+“Let him stop now, then,” cried Marguerite, “for we are without a
+penny!”
+
+Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes’s notes and returned, bringing
+them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
+moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
+noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father,
+reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard,
+then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his
+daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
+
+“My child,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+tenderness, “forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
+wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
+wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold,” he went
+on, pointing to the martyr’s portrait. “He died for Liberty, I die for
+Science; he is venerated, I am hated.”
+
+“Hated? oh, my father, no,” she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
+“we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?” she said, turning to her sister
+who came in at the moment.
+
+“What is the matter, dear father?” said his youngest daughter, taking
+his hand.
+
+“I have ruined you.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Felicie, “but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+always at the head of his class.”
+
+“See, father,” said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
+way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock,
+“here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing
+left to pay them with--”
+
+“Then you have money?” whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
+from his surprise.
+
+His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
+joy and hope in her father’s face as he looked about him to discover the
+gold.
+
+“Father,” she said, “I have my own fortune.”
+
+“Give it to me,” he said with a rapacious gesture; “I will return you a
+hundred-fold.”
+
+“Yes, I will give it to you,” answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+
+“Ah, my dear daughter!” he cried, “you save my life. I have thought of a
+last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I
+do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms,
+my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You
+give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to
+heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you with jewels, with
+wealth.”
+
+He kissed his daughter’s forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
+testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
+obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at
+her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
+mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
+rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his
+attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature old
+age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast
+of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a
+glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
+
+“Well, well,” he said, following her eyes, “in six months we shall fill
+them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
+Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
+beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita,” he said, smiling,
+“thy name is a prophecy. ‘Margarita’ means a pearl. Sterne says so
+somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
+would amuse you.”
+
+“A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease,” she answered; “we have
+suffered enough already.”
+
+“Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
+be rich and all-powerful.”
+
+“Mademoiselle has got such a good heart,” said Lemulquinier, whose
+seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+
+For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
+the natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
+Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic
+fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit,
+which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters
+into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first
+time in many months, the father and the children reunited. The young
+professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the
+scene; for Claes’s manners and conversation had recovered their former
+irresistible seduction!
+
+Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
+More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
+are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget
+all; they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own
+souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of
+all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their
+power to observe and recognize that which goes on around them, they are
+satisfied with having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them
+on, and they frequently make false application of the knowledge they
+have acquired about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their
+social apathy, or they drop from the world of thought to the world of
+life; at such times they come with well-stored memories, and are by no
+means strangers to what is happening.
+
+Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
+brain, knew his daughter’s whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
+history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed
+this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it.
+It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were
+unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,--contrasting
+with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When
+Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light
+and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some
+embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in
+gold, the possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them
+on the work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she
+was mending; and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the
+money. When he returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o’clock struck;
+Martha, who sat up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
+
+“Where can we hide it?” said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
+of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
+disastrous.
+
+“I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow,” said Emmanuel;
+“you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
+looking for them there.”
+
+Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table
+to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry,
+and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and
+the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor
+door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+
+“What are you doing,” he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
+terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
+hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
+sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
+horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
+
+“I could not be mistaken,” said Balthazar, sitting down; “I heard the
+sound of gold.”
+
+He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
+beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking
+of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the
+parlor.
+
+“Thank you, Monsieur de Solis,” said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
+glance which meant, “Come to my rescue and help me to save this money.”
+
+“What gold is this?” resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
+Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+
+“This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
+to me that I may pay our debts honorably,” she answered.
+
+Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
+caught him by the arm.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said, “you must not escape my thanks.”
+
+“Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
+Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,”
+ Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an
+almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+
+“I shall not allow that,” said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
+paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+astonished young people. “How much is it?” His eager passion made him
+more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
+his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+
+“Let us count it,” he said.
+
+“There are six thousand ducats,” said Emmanuel.
+
+“Seventy thousand francs,” remarked Claes.
+
+The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said, “your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
+thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means
+of paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
+hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
+can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
+that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
+denuded land of the forest of Waignies.”
+
+Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel’s purity of soul. Brought
+up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
+young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
+and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
+conscience.
+
+“Adieu, monsieur,” said Balthazar, “I thought you had more confidence in
+a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father.”
+
+After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
+out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+
+The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
+
+“You love me, do you not?”
+
+“Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it.”
+
+She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
+them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed
+him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand
+ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,--
+
+“Marguerite, I must have that money.”
+
+“If you take it, it will be robbery,” she replied coldly. “Hear me,
+father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths
+a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield.”
+
+“Do you mean to kill your father?”
+
+“We avenge our mother,” she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
+Claes died.
+
+“My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
+those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
+problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me,” he cried in accents of
+despair. “Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes,
+I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the word
+of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children are
+sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
+my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
+myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will do
+your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no longer be
+the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my authority. I
+swear by your mother’s memory!” he cried, shedding tears.
+
+Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
+thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+
+“Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!” he cried. “What are
+sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
+will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
+labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I will go
+away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes
+I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
+them.”
+
+Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
+his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
+
+“Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
+myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall
+say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and
+incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands.
+You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as
+the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood.”
+
+“If it were my blood, my life’s blood, I would give it to you,” she
+cried; “but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister?
+No. Cease, cease!” she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her
+father’s caressing hands.
+
+“Sixty thousand francs and two months,” he said, rising in anger; “that
+is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth.
+I curse you!” he went on; “you are no daughter of mine, you are not a
+woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!--Give it
+to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
+forever,”--and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous energy
+towards the gold.
+
+“I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
+us now,” she said, pointing to the picture.
+
+“Try to live, if you can, with your father’s blood upon you,” cried
+Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
+might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
+replied by a negative motion of her head.
+
+“Farewell, my daughter,” he said, gently, “may you live happy!”
+
+When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
+her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness
+of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities
+of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and
+Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to
+her that days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up
+the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter
+his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with
+the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without
+light, without noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father
+with a pistol at his head.
+
+“Take all!” she cried, springing towards him.
+
+She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
+old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
+her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+
+“Enough, father, enough,” she said; “remember your promise. If you do
+not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, mother!” she cried, turning towards Madame Claes’s chamber, “YOU
+would have given him all--would you not?”
+
+“Sleep in peace,” said Balthazar, “you are a good daughter.”
+
+“Sleep!” she said, “the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
+old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother’s heart.”
+
+“Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
+the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
+the truth.”
+
+“I comprehend our ruin,” she said, leaving him.
+
+The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
+spend the day.
+
+“Well?” he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+
+“I yielded,” she replied.
+
+“My dear life,” he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, “if you had
+withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
+adore you!”
+
+“Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?”
+
+“Leave the future to me,” cried the young man, with a radiant look; “we
+love each other, and all is well.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
+and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
+of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
+well-being of the household.
+
+During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
+her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might
+be, she had come to hope in her father’s genius. By an inexplicable
+phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the
+flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said
+to herself, “If my father succeeds, we shall be happy.” Claes and
+Lemulquinier alone said: “We shall succeed.” Unhappily, from day to day
+the Searcher’s face grew sadder. Sometimes, when he came to dinner he
+dared not look at his daughter; at other times he glanced at her in
+triumph. Marguerite employed her evenings in making young de Solis
+explain to her many legal points and difficulties. At last her masculine
+education was completed; she was evidently preparing herself to execute
+the plan she had resolved upon if her father were again vanquished in
+his duel with the Unknown (X).
+
+About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound
+now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife’s chamber; he shuddered,
+no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his
+movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science.
+Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while before
+dinner.
+
+“You have not succeeded, father?”
+
+“No, my child.”
+
+“Ah!” said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. “I will not say one word of
+reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of
+your promise; it is surely sacred to you--you are a Claes. Your children
+will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now belong to
+me; you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be gentle,
+and I will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I am going
+to leave you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs; for,” she
+said, kissing him on his brow, “you are now my child. I take Martha with
+me; to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor child is
+only seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you; therefore be
+generous, do not ask her for money; she has only enough for the barest
+necessaries of the household. Take courage: renounce your labors and
+your thoughts for three or four years. The great problem may ripen
+towards discovery; by that time I shall have gathered the money that
+is necessary to solve it,--and you will solve it. Tell me, father, your
+queen is clement, is she not?”
+
+“Then all is not lost?” said the old man.
+
+“No, not if you keep your word.”
+
+“I will obey you, my daughter,” answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+
+The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his
+great-niece. He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain
+long enough for Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements.
+Monsieur Claes received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously
+sad and humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with
+blunt frankness while they were breakfasting:--
+
+“I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,--a
+ruinous passion, but we all have our manias.”
+
+“Dear uncle!” exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+“The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of
+a Claes is there,” said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, “and here,”
+ striking his heart; “don’t you think so? I count upon you: and for that
+reason, having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use in
+your service.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Balthazar, “I will repay you with treasures--”
+
+“The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,”
+ replied Conyncks, sternly. “Our ancestor has those words engraved upon
+his brow,” he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur Conyncks
+for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a daughter
+twelve years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune. It was not
+impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the good people of
+Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her great-uncle. The
+rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot
+haste to the House of Claes.
+
+Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
+For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
+camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
+latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
+place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
+into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
+were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830,
+was accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the
+one ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of
+functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance,
+to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall
+of the legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
+between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist “cafes” displayed
+an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal “cafes” so brilliantly
+that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the lives of some
+of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand
+such practice. The two societies naturally became exclusive.
+
+Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
+must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when
+he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
+shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
+fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
+think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were
+all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper
+circle by means of some creditable alliance.
+
+The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
+kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the
+old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him
+from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter
+of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social
+vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned
+to his allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary
+sacrifices to conclude a marriage which should realize all his
+ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar and Felicie during
+Marguerite’s absence; but in so doing he discovered, rather late in the
+day, a formidable competitor in Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the
+deceased abbe was thought to be considerable, and to the eyes of a man
+who calculated all the affairs of life in figures, the young heir seemed
+more powerful through his money than through the seductions of the
+heart--as to which Pierquin never made himself uneasy. In his mind the
+abbe’s fortune restored the de Solis name to all its pristine value.
+Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs which reflected lustre on one
+another and doubled the illumination.
+
+The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin’s spirit of emulation. He
+tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
+expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
+airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared
+himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let
+her know that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who
+received for the first time in her life the compliments of a man,
+listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive; she took
+emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix the vague
+emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind.
+Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving attentions
+with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless wished to be,
+like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of a man.
+
+Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
+over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in
+his attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
+intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps
+in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon,
+little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind
+Emmanuel’s back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a
+meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes.
+Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the
+secret of Marguerite’s journey, and to know if it were really a
+question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but,
+notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither
+Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good reason
+that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins
+of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as to her
+projects.
+
+The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
+difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
+making him play backgammon, the chemist’s mind was never present; during
+most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid.
+Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes,
+a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the
+burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of
+genius, gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic
+spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even
+Pierquin could not enter without respect the presence of that caged
+lion, whose eyes, full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded
+from excess of light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the
+mouth dared not utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered
+face, whose fires revived at the conception of a new experiment; then,
+as he looked about the parlor, Balthazar’s eyes would fasten on the spot
+where his wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand
+across the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense,
+and his head fell forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the
+world, and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
+
+This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man the
+necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the convictions
+of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes and Marguerite
+had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly checked the
+impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in efforts at
+consolation which still further embittered the anguish of the doomed
+Titan.
+
+Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in her
+departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either to him
+or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her he seemed
+annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against him? Was he
+humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of paternity to his
+own child? Had he come to love her less because she was now the father,
+he the child? Perhaps there were many of these reasons, many of these
+inexpressible feelings which float like vapors through the soul, in the
+mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite. However great may be the
+great men of earth, be they known or unknown, fortunate or unfortunate
+in their endeavors, all have likenesses which belong to human nature.
+By a double misfortune they suffer through their greatness not less than
+through their defects; and perhaps Balthazar needed to grow accustomed
+to the pangs of wounded vanity. The life he was leading, the evenings
+when these four persons met together in Marguerite’s absence, were full
+of sadness and vague, uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like
+a parched-up soil; where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few
+rare consolations, though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the
+strength of the family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+
+Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the
+return of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her
+uncle who remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no
+doubt to lend the weight of his authority to some coup d’etat planned
+by his niece. Marguerite’s return was made a family fete. Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar. When
+the travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went to meet
+it with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see her home
+once more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the court-yard
+to reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored like a guilty
+wife who is unable to dissimulate; but her face recovered its serenity
+as she looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed to gather strength to
+complete a work she had secretly undertaken.
+
+Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the dinner,
+father and daughter watched each other with distrust and curiosity.
+Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in Paris,
+doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis imitated
+his reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family secrets,
+said to Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of
+liveliness:--
+
+“Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres--”
+
+“I have seen little of Paris,” she said; “I did not go there for
+amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai once
+more.”
+
+“Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+Opera; and even there she was uneasy,” said Monsieur Conyncks.
+
+It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite
+and Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the
+rest. As the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew
+more and more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but
+her motions, her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen anxiety.
+Messieurs Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of the secret
+feelings which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared to encourage
+her by expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept from a
+knowledge of the steps that had been taken on his behalf, withdrew
+little by little from his children and friends, and pointedly kept
+silence. Marguerite would no doubt soon disclose what she had decided
+upon for his future.
+
+To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age
+a man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and more
+thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he would be
+forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of those crises
+in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by imagery. The
+thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were laughing in the
+fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was coming, but they held
+up their heads and continued on their way. Monsieur Conyncks was the
+first to leave the room, conducted by Balthazar to his chamber.
+During the latter’s absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis went away.
+Marguerite bade the notary good-night with much affection; she said
+nothing to Emmanuel, but she pressed his hand and gave him a tearful
+glance. She sent Felicie away, and when Claes returned to the parlor he
+found his daughter alone.
+
+“My kind father,” she said in a trembling voice, “nothing could have
+made me leave home but the serious position in which we found
+ourselves; but now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest
+difficulties, I return with some chances of deliverance for all of us.
+Thanks to your name, and to my uncle’s influence, and to the support
+of Monsieur de Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under
+government as receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth, they
+say, eighteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has given
+bonds as your security. Here is the nomination,” she added, drawing
+a paper from her bag. “Your life in Douai, in this house, during the
+coming years of privation and sacrifice would be intolerable to you. Our
+father must be placed in a situation at least equal to that in which he
+has always lived. I ask nothing from the salary you will receive from
+this appointment; employ it as you see fit. I will only beg you to
+remember that we have not a penny of income, and that we must live on
+what Gabriel can give us out of his. The town shall know nothing of
+our inner life. If you were still to live in this house you would be
+an obstacle to the means my sister and I are about to employ to restore
+comfort and ease to the home. Have I abused the authority you gave me by
+putting you in a position to remake your own fortune? In a few years, if
+you so will, you can easily become the receiver-general.”
+
+“In other words, Marguerite,” said Balthazar, gently, “you turn me out
+of my own house.”
+
+“I do not deserve that bitter reproach,” replied the daughter, quelling
+the tumultuous beatings of her heart. “You will come back to us in a
+manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your promise.
+You are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he might himself
+accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone.”
+
+“I shall not go,” said Balthazar, rising; “I need no help from any one
+to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children.”
+
+“It would be better, certainly,” replied Marguerite, calmly. “But now I
+ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in
+a few words. If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so
+that you may remain its master.”
+
+“Marguerite!” cried Balthazar.
+
+“In that case,” she said, continuing her words without taking notice of
+her father’s anger, “it will be necessary to notify the minister of your
+refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post,
+which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but
+for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a
+lady.”
+
+“My children leave me!” he exclaimed.
+
+“You must leave us or we must leave you,” she said. “If I were your only
+child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate;
+but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and
+despair. I promised it to her who died there,” she said, pointing to
+the place where her mother’s bed had stood. “We have hidden our troubles
+from you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone. My father,
+we are not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it.
+Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be
+incessantly brought to nought by the caprices of a passion.”
+
+“My dear children,” cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite’s hand, “I will
+help you, I will work, I--”
+
+“Here is the means,” she answered, showing him the official letter.
+
+“But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose
+the fruits of ten years’ work, and the enormous sums of money which my
+laboratory represents. There,” he said, pointing towards the garret,
+“are our real resources.”
+
+Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--
+
+“Father, you must choose.”
+
+“Ah! my daughter, you are very hard,” he replied, sitting down in an
+armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+
+The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple announcement
+turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old
+valet remarked hastily:--
+
+“Don’t be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at
+eleven o’clock to breakfast. He didn’t go to bed all night. At two in
+the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the
+window at the laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him; he
+wept; he is in trouble. Here’s the famous month of July when the sun is
+able to enrich us all, and if you only would--”
+
+“Enough,” said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed
+her father’s mind.
+
+A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the
+places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his
+laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to
+him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to whom
+the public holidays are so much lost time. Here were his hopes; here the
+heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe
+the breath of life. This alliance of places and things with men, which
+is so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of
+science and students. To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce
+Science, to abandon the Problem,--it was death.
+
+Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in
+which her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the
+parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+
+At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite
+studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of
+stormy grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him
+good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her
+to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,--
+
+“I have been to get my passport.”
+
+The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed
+the poor girl’s heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears,
+and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at
+her ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man
+who had come to a decision.
+
+“So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle,” he said to Monsieur Conyncks.
+“I have always wished to go there.”
+
+“It is a place where one can live cheaply,” replied the old man.
+
+“Is our father going away?” cried Felicie.
+
+Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+
+“You must leave him with me to-day,” said Balthazar, putting his son
+beside him. “I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye.”
+
+Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
+gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
+both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile.
+All instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
+declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
+Balthazar’s age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm;
+he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the tyrannous
+power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening was over, and
+father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day
+had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the first years of his
+fatherhood, held out his hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness
+that was mingled with despair,--
+
+“Are you satisfied with your father?”
+
+“You are worthy of HIM,” said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
+Van Claes.
+
+The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to
+the laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
+cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
+him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
+garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the
+various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded; each
+was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly ordered
+Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids, and to
+separate all substances which might produce explosions. While taking
+these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those uttered by
+a condemned man before going to the scaffold.
+
+“Here,” he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
+a voltaic pile were dipped, “is an experiment whose results ought to be
+watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have driven
+from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their feet. In a
+combination of carbon and sulphur,” he went on, speaking to himself,
+“carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--”
+
+“Ah! is that how it would be?” said Lemulquinier, contemplating his
+master with admiration.
+
+“Now here,” continued Balthazar, after a pause, “the combination is
+subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act--”
+
+“If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force.”
+
+“No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the
+conditions of crystallization--”
+
+“Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization,” cried the old
+valet impatiently.
+
+“If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will crystallize,”
+ said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of indistinct thoughts
+which were parts of a complete conception in his own mind; “but if the
+battery works under certain conditions of which I am ignorant--it must
+be watched carefully--it is quite possible that--Ah! what am I thinking
+of? It is no longer a question of chemistry, my friend; we are to keep
+accounts in Bretagne.”
+
+Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur
+de Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science had
+imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the carriage
+with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the threshold.
+There, as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with a despairing
+pressure, he whispered in her ear, “You are a good girl; I bear you no
+ill-will”; then she darted through the court-yard into the parlor, and
+flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her mother had died, and
+prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish the hard task that lay
+before her. She was already strengthened by an inward voice, sounding in
+her heart the encouragement of angels and the gratitude of her mother,
+when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel, and Pierquin came in, after
+watching the carriage until it disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+“And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!” said Pierquin.
+
+“Save the family,” she answered simply. “We own nearly thirteen hundred
+acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into three farms,
+put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I believe that in a
+few years, with patience and great economy, each of us,” motioning to
+her sister and brother, “will have a farm of over four-hundred acres,
+which may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly fifteen thousand
+francs. My brother Gabriel will have this house, and all that now stands
+in his name on the Grand-Livre, for his portion. We shall then be able
+to redeem our father’s property and return it to him free from all
+encumbrance, by devoting our incomes, each of us, to paying off his
+debts.”
+
+“But, my dear cousin,” said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite’s
+understanding of business and her cool judgment, “you will need at least
+two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your houses, and
+purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?”
+
+“That is where my difficulties begin,” she said, looking alternately at
+Pierquin and de Solis; “I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has already
+spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father’s security.”
+
+“You have friends!” cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+demoiselles Claes were “four-hundred-thousand-franc girls,” after all.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin, unfortunately
+for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of his enthusiasm,
+and he promptly added,--
+
+“I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs.”
+
+Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to
+find her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at her
+sister, who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the
+poor girl had allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin’s meaningless
+gallantries.
+
+“You shall only pay me five per cent interest,” went on the lawyer,
+“and refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take a
+mortgage on your property. And don’t be uneasy; you shall only have the
+outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy farmers,
+and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like a good
+relation.”
+
+Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too
+much occupied in studying the changes of her sister’s face to perceive
+it. After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused smile,
+and answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de Solis:--
+
+“You are indeed a good relation,--I expected nothing less of you; but an
+interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall wait
+till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has in the
+Funds.”
+
+Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+
+“Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+you,” said Marguerite to her sister. “Jean, my angel, be a good boy;
+don’t tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as
+many new ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard.”
+
+Felicie carried off her brother.
+
+“Cousin,” said Marguerite to Pierquin, “and you, monsieur,” she said
+to Monsieur de Solis, “I know you have been to see my father during my
+absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let us
+understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both with
+the greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with Josette
+and Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one, not even
+an old friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the circumstances
+in which we are placed, our conduct must be irreproachable. We are vowed
+to toil and solitude for a long, long time.”
+
+There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in contemplation
+of Marguerite’s head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know what to say. He
+took leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against himself; for
+he suddenly perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and that he,
+Pierquin, had just behaved like a fool.
+
+“Pierquin, my friend,” he said, apostrophizing himself in the street,
+“if a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool
+I am! I’ve got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business,
+without counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets, which
+is likely to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is so
+economical), and I’ve had the madness to ask interest from Mademoiselle
+Claes! I know those two are jeering at me now! I mustn’t think of
+Marguerite any more. No. After all, Felicie is a sweet, gentle little
+creature, who will suit me much better. Marguerite’s character is iron;
+she would want to rule me--and--she would rule me. Come, come, let’s be
+generous; I wish I was not so much of a lawyer: am I never to get that
+harness off my back? Bless my soul! I’ll begin to fall in love with
+Felicie, and I won’t budge from that sentiment. She will have a farm
+of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner or later, will be worth
+twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for the soil about Waignies
+is excellent. Just let my old uncle des Racquets die, poor dear man,
+and I’ll sell my practice and be a man of leisure, with
+fifty--thou--sand--francs--a--year. My wife is a Claes, I’m allied
+to the great families. The deuce! we’ll see if those Courtevilles and
+Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come and dine with a
+Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of Douai; I’ll obtain the
+cross, and get to be deputy--in short, everything. Ha, ha! Pierquin, my
+boy, now keep yourself in hand; no more nonsense, because--yes, on my
+word of honor--Felicie--Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes--loves you!”
+
+When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to
+Marguerite, who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They rose
+with one impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but as
+they reached the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist his
+joy, and, in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said,--
+
+“I have three hundred thousand francs of yours.”
+
+“What!” she cried, “did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then
+where did you get them?”
+
+“Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who first
+said the word ‘ourselves’?”
+
+“Dear Emmanuel!” she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held hers;
+and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself into a low
+chair.
+
+“It is for me to thank you,” he said, with the voice of love, “since you
+accept all.”
+
+“Oh, my dear beloved one,” she cried, “this moment effaces many a grief
+and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,” she
+continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, “I know the way to
+make it mine.”
+
+She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to witness.
+The young man’s eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did not notice
+that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the words:--
+
+“From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father’s
+indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself,” she said, holding
+out the ring. “Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you--she would have
+chosen you.”
+
+The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside her,
+offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+
+“This is my mother’s wedding-ring,” he said, kissing it. “My Marguerite,
+am I to have no other pledge than this?”
+
+She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+
+“Alas, dear love,” she said, greatly agitated, “are we not doing wrong?
+We have so long to wait!”
+
+“My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of
+patience,--he spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you;
+I have long mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as
+I am His.”
+
+They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm.
+It was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an
+overflowing spring, poured forth its superabundance in little wavelets.
+The events which separated these lovers produced a melancholy which only
+made their happiness the keener, giving it a sense of something sharp,
+like pain.
+
+Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact
+of love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,--exchanging
+a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this discretion cost
+him, how hungry his soul was for that happiness so long desired, which
+had just been consecrated by the betrothal of their hearts.
+
+“Come here, little sister,” said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their words
+of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their projects. In
+spite of her sister’s joyous tone and lively manner, Felicie experienced
+a sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite took her hand and felt
+it tremble.
+
+“Mademoiselle Felicie,” said the elder, with her lips at her sister’s
+ear. “I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence, and
+he has said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them.” Felicie
+blushed. “Don’t defend yourself, my angel,” continued Marguerite, “it
+is so natural to love! Perhaps your dear nature will improve his; he is
+egotistical and self-interested, but for all that he is a good man, and
+his defects may even add to your happiness. He will love you as the best
+of his possessions; you will be a part of his business affairs. Forgive
+me this one word, dear love; you will soon correct the bad habit he has
+acquired of seeing money in everything, by teaching him the business of
+the heart.”
+
+Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+
+“Besides,” added Marguerite, “he has property; and his family belongs
+to the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don’t think I would
+oppose your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do
+you?”
+
+Felicie let fall the words, “Dear sister.”
+
+“Yes, you may confide in me,” cried Marguerite, “sisters can surely tell
+each other their secrets.”
+
+These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When Marguerite,
+expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie’s
+heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--
+
+“Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--”
+
+“Ah!” cried Felicie, laughing, “leave me to my own devices; I have a
+model before my eyes.”
+
+“Saucy child!” exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+
+Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
+accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
+and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
+both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the
+two were, to use his own expression, “romantic and sentimental girls,”
+ adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
+Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
+no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream;
+and accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took
+her mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk
+sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of the primal contract which,
+according to social usage, must precede the notarial contract.
+
+“Dear cousin,” he said, “you and I have not always been of one mind as
+to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
+you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
+desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
+fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
+me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
+have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
+that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
+successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
+that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
+brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
+take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
+service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at one
+quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I
+ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
+good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
+wife happy.”
+
+“This is all satisfactory, cousin,” answered Marguerite; “but my
+sister’s choice depends upon herself and also on my father’s will.”
+
+“I know that, my dear cousin,” said the lawyer, “but you are the mother
+of the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that you
+should judge me rightly.”
+
+This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the
+note ran as follows: “Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor of
+the city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT of
+being present, etc.”
+
+Marguerite accepted the lawyer’s offer only so far as it related to his
+professional services, so that she might not in any degree compromise
+either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister’s future, or her
+father’s authority.
+
+The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette (who
+vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and seconded
+all her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where she began
+operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin.
+Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that
+worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he
+had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save
+Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and working the ground
+intended for the farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers,
+who were anxious to settle themselves in life, and he succeeded, through
+the prospect he held out to them of the fertility of the land, in making
+them take leases of the three farms on which the buildings were to be
+constructed. To gain possession of the farms rent-free for three years
+the tenants bound themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year the
+fourth year, twelve thousand the sixth year, and fifteen thousand for
+the remainder of the term; to drain the land, make the plantations, and
+purchase the cattle. While the buildings were being put up the farmers
+were to clear the land.
+
+Four years after Balthazar Claes’s departure from his home Marguerite
+had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two
+hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up
+the farm buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave
+girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town. Marguerite
+superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases
+with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so
+well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment. By the
+fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental
+of the farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her
+brother’s name, and the proceeds of her father’s property, towards
+paying off the mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation
+which her father’s passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes.
+This redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.
+Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred
+thousand francs of his uncle’s bequest, and by joining to it twenty
+thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her
+management a large slice of the debts. This life of courage,
+privation, and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went
+well,--everything prospered under the administration and influence of
+Marguerite Claes.
+
+Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in
+the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his
+great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he
+succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her
+father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole
+Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired
+its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand
+of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.
+
+At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left
+Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired
+by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his
+family and crown their happiness by his presence. Marguerite had often
+expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had
+formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day
+when her father would return as master of his house. In her absence
+Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare
+a surprise which should make the younger sister a sharer in the
+restoration of the House of Claes. The two bought a number of fine
+pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate the gallery.
+Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing. Wishing to testify to
+Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble conduct and in the
+self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her mother’s dying mandate,
+he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures, among them several of
+those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be brought to Douai
+in Marguerite’s absence, so that the Claes gallery might once more be
+complete.
+
+During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her
+sister or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed;
+but since her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming
+symptoms, the gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony with
+which he lived that he might spend the greater part of his salary in
+experiments the results of which forever disappointed him. Though he was
+only sixty-five years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His eyes were
+sunken in their orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a few hairs
+remained as a fringe around his skull; he allowed his beard to grow, and
+cut it off with scissors when its length annoyed him; he was bent like a
+field-laborer, and the condition of his clothes had reached a degree of
+wretchedness which his decrepitude now rendered hideous. Thought still
+animated that noble face, whose features were scarcely discernible
+under its wrinkles; but the fixity of the eyes, a certain desperation
+of manner, a restless uneasiness, were all diagnostics of insanity, or
+rather of many forms of insanity. Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the
+look of a monomaniac; at other times impatient anger at not seizing a
+secret which flitted before his eyes like a will o’ the wisp brought
+symptoms of madness into his face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter
+betrayed his irrationality: but during the greater part of the time, he
+was sunk in a state of complete depression which combined all the phases
+of insanity in the cold melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and
+imperceptible these symptoms may have been to the eye of strangers, they
+were, unfortunately, only too plain to those who had known Balthazar
+Claes sublime in goodness, noble in heart, stately in person,--a Claes
+of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige now remained.
+
+Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant
+toil, had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+expression of the old valet’s face showed a singular mixture of
+anxiety and admiration for his master which might easily have misled
+an onlooker. Though he listened to Balthazar’s words with respect, and
+followed his every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of
+the servant of science very much as a mother takes care of her child,
+and even seemed to protect him, because in the vulgar details of life,
+to which Balthazar gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These
+old men, wrapped in one idea, confident of the reality of their hope,
+stirred by the same breath, the one representing the shell, the other
+the soul of their mutual existence, formed a spectacle at once tender
+and distressing.
+
+When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living
+at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+possession of his office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native
+town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar’s mind. His daughter’s
+letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning
+his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution
+of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite’s arrival with extreme
+impatience.
+
+The daughter threw herself into her father’s arms and wept for joy. This
+time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the
+exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like
+those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety
+of the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father
+and saw the change which had taken place in him since her last visit.
+Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on
+taking Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence
+of his native place might restore him to health and reason amid the
+happiness of a recovered domestic life.
+
+After the first transports of the heart were over,--which were far
+warmer on Balthazar’s part than Marguerite had expected,--he showed a
+singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+
+Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for
+a time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had
+dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and
+the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and
+childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His
+daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy
+she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from
+him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that
+had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity
+he had long neglected,--all these things affected his mind towards her,
+and increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him
+beside Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and
+seemed to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman
+who rules them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite
+noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child
+detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic
+and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by
+toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips
+and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that
+greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence
+to restore her father’s sense of dignity before the solemn day on which
+he was to reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they
+were alone was to ask him,--
+
+“Do you owe anything here?”
+
+Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:--
+
+“I don’t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+more about my affairs than I do myself.”
+
+Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+
+“What does monsieur want?” asked Lemulquinier.
+
+Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her
+heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some
+mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion
+of his labors.
+
+“My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+without you,” she said.
+
+“Monsieur,” began Lemulquinier, “owes--”
+
+At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+intercepted; it humiliated her.
+
+“Tell me all that my father owes,” she said.
+
+“Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who
+is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and
+lead, and zinc and the reagents--”
+
+“Is that all?” asked Marguerite.
+
+Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a
+spell,--
+
+“Yes, mademoiselle.”
+
+“Very good,” she said, “I will give them to you.”
+
+Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,--
+
+“You are an angel, my child.”
+
+He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad;
+and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the
+signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three
+thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.
+
+“Be frank with me, father,” she said, letting him seat her on his knee;
+“you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without
+an element of fear in the midst of the general joy.”
+
+“My dear Marguerite,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a
+grace that seemed a memory of her youth, “you would scold me--”
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+“Truly?” he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. “Can I
+tell you all? will you pay--”
+
+“Yes,” she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+
+“Well, I owe--oh! I dare not--”
+
+“Tell me, father.”
+
+“It is a great deal.”
+
+She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+
+“I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.”
+
+“Thirty thousand francs,” she said, “is just the sum I have laid by. I
+am glad to give it to you,” she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+
+He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the
+chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:--
+
+“My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the
+Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were about
+to sue me,--me, who would have made their fortune!”
+
+“Father,” said Marguerite in accents of despair, “are you still
+searching?”
+
+“Yes, still searching,” he said, with the smile of a madman, “and I
+shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached--”
+
+“We? who are we?”
+
+“I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he
+is devoted to me.”
+
+Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+should lower himself in her uncle’s eyes. She was frightened at the
+ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for
+the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who
+saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the
+liberation of his fortune.
+
+On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and
+her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy
+over his master such as common men without education are able to obtain
+over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men,
+taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete
+dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case
+the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows
+out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab
+for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of
+this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke
+if it were real.
+
+They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite
+to pay off her father’s debts and request the manufacturers of chemical
+products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any
+orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of
+dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This
+corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which
+augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the
+thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his
+own house, started for Douai.
+
+Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the
+nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily
+diverted the chemist’s mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of
+his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous
+company of his family and friends gathering about him his emotion was
+so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids
+reddened, and he held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming
+unable to release them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to
+tears.
+
+When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from
+the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the
+court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details
+with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew
+himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears
+came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care
+with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he
+formerly had sold,--a visible sign that all the other disasters had been
+repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and
+shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware not less valuable than
+the treasures that formerly stood there. Though the family meal lasted
+a long time, it was still too short for the narratives which Balthazar
+exacted from each of his children. The reaction of his moral being
+caused by this return to his home wedded him once more to family
+happiness, and he was again a father. His manners recovered their former
+dignity. At first the delight of recovering possession kept him from
+dwelling on the means by which the recovery had been brought about. His
+joy therefore was full and unalloyed.
+
+Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into
+the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal
+papers which the notary’s clerk had laid upon a table, by which he
+was standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and
+Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+
+“This,” said Pierquin, “is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes
+renders to his children. It is not very amusing,” he added, laughing
+after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in
+speaking of serious matters, “but I must really oblige you to listen to
+it.”
+
+Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a
+reproach, and his brow clouded.
+
+The clerk began the reading. Balthazar’s amazement increased as little
+by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the
+fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been
+sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of
+the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and
+as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In
+consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar
+was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released
+from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were
+signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys
+formerly borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.
+
+Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood,
+the life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and
+looked about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of
+her sex, had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to
+see that all the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared. Each
+member of the family understood the old man’s wish when the failing
+humid eyes sought for the daughter,--who was seen by all present, with
+the eyes of the soul, as an angel of strength and light within the
+house. Gabriel went to find her. Hearing her step, Balthazar ran to
+clasp her in his arms.
+
+“Father,” she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man caught
+her and strained her to his breast, “I implore you not to lessen your
+sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying out your
+wishes, and be the sole author of the good that has been done here.”
+
+Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter, folded
+his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face recovered an
+expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long years,--
+
+“Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!”
+
+He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went
+back to the parlor.
+
+“My children,” he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former
+days had made him so imposing, “we all owe gratitude and thanks to
+my daughter Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has
+fulfilled my intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed
+by my labors, gave the reins of our domestic government into her hands.”
+
+“Ah, now!” cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, “we must read the
+marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids
+me to draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur
+Raparlier is coming.”
+
+The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+Claes’s return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company
+quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality
+of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three
+families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to
+vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The
+parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal
+couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere
+shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave
+as to those who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone
+on every face, and the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost
+sight of by the spectators,--who often busy themselves in estimating it
+out of curiosity.
+
+The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated,
+all present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the
+parlor on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next
+to them stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on, Felicie
+and Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only persons who were
+seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who, for this occasion,
+had taken Pierquin’s duty. Jean stood behind his father. A score of
+ladies elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from among the nearest
+relatives of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the Claes, the mayor of
+Douai, who was to marry the couples, the twelve witnesses chosen from
+among the nearest friends of the three families, all, even the curate of
+Saint-Pierre, remained standing and formed an imposing circle at the
+end of the parlor next the court-yard. This homage paid by the whole
+assembly to Paternity, which at such a moment shines with almost regal
+majesty, gave to the scene a certain antique character. It was the only
+moment for sixteen long years when Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+
+Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if all
+the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived; on
+receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took up
+the marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis, which
+was the first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor opened
+and Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+
+“Monsieur! monsieur!” he cried.
+
+Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a
+sign, he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious of
+a shock.
+
+“I dared not tell you, my child,” said the father, “but since you
+have done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+Lemulquinier lent me all his savings--the fruit of twenty years’
+economy--for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah! my
+angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled me
+in my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,--without him I should have
+died.”
+
+“Monsieur! monsieur!” cried Lemulquinier.
+
+“What is it?” said Balthazar, turning round.
+
+“A diamond!”
+
+Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+valet, who whispered in his ear,--
+
+“I have been to the laboratory.”
+
+The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on
+the old Fleming which meant, “You went before me to the laboratory!”
+
+“Yes,” continued Lemulquinier, “I found the diamond in the china capsule
+which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur--and
+see!” he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose
+brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+
+“My children, my friends,” said Balthazar, “forgive my old servant,
+forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years
+has produced--without me--a discovery I have sought for sixteen years.
+How? My God, I know not--yes, I left sulphide of carbon under the
+influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched
+from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my
+laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it
+not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that
+slow, that sudden--what can I call it?--crystallization, transformation,
+in short that miracle, then, then my children would have been richer
+still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem which I
+seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that diamond upon
+my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied affections have
+made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of Science.”
+
+Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
+
+Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected
+the souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite,
+saying,--
+
+“It is thine, my angel.”
+
+Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the
+notary, saying, “Go on.”
+
+The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as
+Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he
+reseated himself, said in a low voice,--
+
+“To-day I must be a father only.”
+
+Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and
+kissed it respectfully.
+
+“No man was ever greater,” said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to
+him; “no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad.”
+
+After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened
+to question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been
+formed; but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident. He
+looked through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an angry
+gesture.
+
+“Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which no
+doubt produces metals, diamonds,” he said, “was manifested there for one
+moment, by one chance.”
+
+“That chance was of course some natural effect,” whispered a guest
+belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation
+of everything. “At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has
+wasted.”
+
+“Let us forget it,” said Balthazar, addressing his friends; “I beg you
+to say no more about it to-day.”
+
+Marguerite took her father’s arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms
+of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he
+entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with
+pictures and garnished with choice flowers.
+
+“Pictures!” he exclaimed, “pictures!--and some of the old ones!”
+
+He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him; he
+felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation came
+before his eyes.
+
+“It is all your own, father,” said Marguerite, guessing the feelings
+that oppressed his soul.
+
+“Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise,” he cried, “how
+many times have you given life to your father?”
+
+“Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+heart,” she said, “and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by nearly
+sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give them
+to Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be made
+comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us. Monsieur
+de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,--a life without
+luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you are able to
+return it.”
+
+“Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father’s
+providence.”
+
+When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored and
+furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently descended
+to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand staircase, on every
+step of which were rare plants and flowering shrubs. A silver service of
+exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel to his father, attracted all
+eyes to a luxury which was surprising to the inhabitants of a town where
+such luxury is traditional. The servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of
+Pierquin, as well as those of the Claes household, were assembled to
+serve the repast. Seeing himself once more at the head of that table,
+surrounded by friends and relatives and happy faces beaming with
+heartfelt joy, Balthazar, behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was
+overcome by emotions so deep and so imposing that all present kept
+silence, as men are silent before great sorrows or great joys.
+
+“Dear children,” he cried, “you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+home the prodigal father.”
+
+These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however,
+and the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character of
+a family fete.
+
+Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to
+arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor
+of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy
+day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which
+involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His
+eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging
+to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate from his daughter.
+Madame Pierquin also left her father’s house to do the honors of a fine
+mansion which Pierquin had built, and where he desired to live in
+all the dignity of rank; for his practise was sold, and his uncle des
+Racquets had died and left him a large property scraped together by slow
+economy. Jean went to Paris to finish his education, and Monsieur and
+Madame de Solis alone remained with their father in the House de Claes.
+Balthazar made over to them the family home in the rear house, and took
+up his own abode on the second floor of the front building.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father’s material comfort,
+aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from
+the hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that
+happiness entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever
+afforded a better illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless
+felicity which all women cherish in their dreams. The union of two
+beings so courageous in the trials of life, who had loved each other
+through years with so sacred an affection, drew forth the respectful
+admiration of the whole community. Monsieur de Solis, who had long held
+an appointment as inspector-general of the University, resigned those
+functions to enjoy his happiness more freely, and remained at Douai
+where every one did such homage to his character and attainments that
+his name was proposed as candidate for the Electoral college whenever
+he should reach the required age. Marguerite, who had shown herself so
+strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet and tender woman.
+
+Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and yet,
+though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his ordinary
+income sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory. Marguerite
+restored all the old customs of the House of Claes, and gave a family
+fete every month in honor of her father, at which the Pierquins and the
+Conyncks were present; and she also received the upper ranks of
+society one day in the week at a “cafe” which became celebrated. Though
+frequently absent-minded, Claes took part in all these assemblages and
+became, to please his daughter, so willingly a man of the world that the
+family were able to believe he had renounced his search for the solution
+of the great problem.
+
+Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis to
+Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself
+and the inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age,
+barrenness, and other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the last
+lineal descendant of the family and heir to the titles and estates of
+his ancient house. Moreover, by one of those curious chances which
+seem impossible except in a book, the house of Solis had acquired the
+territory and titles of the Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite did not wish
+to separate from her husband, who was to stay in Spain long enough to
+settle his affairs, and she was, moreover, curious to see the castle
+of Casa-Real where her mother had passed her childhood, and the city of
+Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. She left Douai, consigning
+the care of the house to Martha, Josette, and Lemulquinier. Balthazar,
+to whom Marguerite had proposed a journey into Spain, declined to
+accompany her on the ground of his advanced age; but certain experiments
+which he had long meditated, and to which he now trusted for the
+realization of his hopes were the real reason of his refusal.
+
+The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until the
+middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for Italy
+on their way back to France. There, however, they received a letter from
+Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months, their father
+had completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to
+pay Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries of the
+household. The old valet had again sacrificed his little property to his
+master. Balthazar was no longer willing to see any one, and would not
+even admit his children to the house. Martha and Josette were dead. The
+coachman, the cook, and the other servants had long been dismissed;
+the horses and carriages were sold. Though Lemulquinier maintained the
+utmost secrecy as to his master’s proceedings, it was believed that the
+thousand francs supplied by Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly
+on experiments. The small amount of provisions which the old valet
+purchased in the town seemed to show that the two old men contented
+themselves with the barest necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House
+of Claes, Gabriel and Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums
+which their father had again borrowed on it. None of his children had
+the slightest influence upon the old man, who at seventy years of age
+displayed extraordinary energy in bending everything to his will,
+even in matters that were trivial. Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had
+decided not to pay off his debts.
+
+This letter changed all Marguerite’s travelling plans, and she
+immediately took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her
+past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar’s debts; but she wished
+to do more, she wished to obey her mother’s last injunction and save him
+from sinking dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise enough
+ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the work
+of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from his
+enfeebled faculties. But she was also anxious to control him without
+wounding his susceptibilities,--not wishing to imitate the children of
+Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result for which he
+had sacrificed so much.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which
+they found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A
+shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the
+noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight
+of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed
+also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that house on
+Marguerite’s return to it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis’s
+valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that Monsieur
+Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.
+
+Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,--glad to escape a
+scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to
+admit her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and
+prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to
+notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+
+When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor. Horror
+overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a
+fire had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum
+and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-room was
+empty: there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal
+table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two
+forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his
+servant had evidently just eaten. In a moment she had flown through her
+father’s portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same
+desolation as the parlor and dining-room. The idea of the Alkahest had
+swept like a conflagration through the building. Her father’s bedroom
+had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter
+candlestick with a tallow candle burned almost to the socket. The house
+was so completely stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at
+the windows. Every object of the smallest value,--everything, even the
+kitchen utensils, had been sold.
+
+Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
+in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier’s chamber and
+found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer
+she found a pawnbroker’s ticket for the old servant’s watch which he had
+pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled
+with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her
+own appartement and ordered the door to be broken open--her father had
+respected it!
+
+Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
+of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
+feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
+tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
+climax, brought about in Marguerite’s soul one of those moral reactions
+against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the
+parlor to wait her father’s arrival, in a state of anxiety that was
+cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she
+about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts
+his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears
+flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the desecrated
+sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts, her useless
+precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,--all, even her
+little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all were parts of a
+poem of unutterable melancholy.
+
+Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
+the catastrophe that was to close her father’s life,--that life at once
+so grand and yet so miserable.
+
+The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
+eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
+who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
+philosopher’s stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
+this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated his
+purposes and branded him with the name of “alchemist,” casting up to
+him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are
+uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
+genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate
+in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and “tutti quanti.” The
+people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of
+genius.
+
+These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from
+the bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity among
+persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,--two
+sentiments big with contempt and with the “vae victis” with which the
+masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune. Persons
+often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the rose
+window of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been
+consumed in smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they pointed
+to him with their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a mocking
+jest or a word of pity would escape the lips of a working-man or some
+mere child. But Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it was
+homage; he could deceive him with impunity, for though the old man’s
+eyes retained the sublime clearness which results from the habit of
+living among great thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+
+To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+common consent “the House of Claes,” was now called in the suburbs and
+the country districts “the Devil’s House.” Every outward sign, even the
+face of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were current
+about Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to purchase the few
+provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking out the cheapest
+he could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,--just as butchers
+slip bones into their customers’ meat,--and he was fortunate, poor
+creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not refuse to sell him
+his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact with an imp of hell.
+
+Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand
+old man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes added
+to this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have seen
+better days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are ashamed
+to beg. It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would be insulted
+in the streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the family any public
+insult would be, had for some time past sent two or three of his own
+servants to follow the old man whenever he went out, and keep him
+in sight at a little distance, for the purpose of protecting him if
+necessary,--the revolution of July not having contributed to make the
+citizens respectful.
+
+By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the secret
+guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back from
+the ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the place
+Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to school.
+Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men, whose faces
+brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys began to
+talk of them. Generally, children’s chatter ends in laughter; on this
+occasion the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know the
+cruelty. Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance,
+and examined the strange old faces with smothered laughter and remarks
+which attracted Lemulquinier’s attention.
+
+“Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, he was born a Wise Man.”
+
+“My papa says he makes gold,” said another.
+
+The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and was
+devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and said
+boldly to Lemulquinier,--
+
+“Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?”
+
+“Yes, my little man,” replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on the
+cheek; “we will give you some of you study well.”
+
+“Ah! monsieur, give me some, too,” was the general exclamation.
+
+The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the
+old men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by
+these sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general
+shout of laughter.
+
+“Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man,” said Lemulquinier.
+
+“Hi, the old harlequin!” cried the lads; “the old sorcerer! you are
+sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!”
+
+Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his cane;
+they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A workman
+who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier brandish his
+cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them, and took their
+part, crying out,--
+
+“Down with the sorcerers!”
+
+The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the
+old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin’s servants,
+appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
+however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud.
+The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
+chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
+that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon
+of introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body
+could not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings,
+and he fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who
+brought him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and
+their servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from
+following the body of the old man to the door of his house, where
+Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister
+had sent for, were waiting to receive him.
+
+The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
+less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing
+that his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of
+his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every
+care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening,
+allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though
+skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood;
+and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially
+affected, perhaps because the old man’s anger had concentrated all
+his forces upon it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the
+children.
+
+This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
+law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
+this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
+more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
+that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
+his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
+to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
+late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
+the matter might be allowed to drop.
+
+Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
+tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
+At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her
+he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He
+was able to press his daughter’s hand with his cold fingers, putting
+into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had
+the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell
+of the brain which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived.
+Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the
+gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his
+memory, this giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded
+him with respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images
+of plenty and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family.
+His every look--by which alone he could manifest his feelings--was
+unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
+that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.
+
+Marguerite paid her father’s debts, and restored a modern splendor to
+the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
+left the old man’s bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
+accomplish his slightest wish.
+
+Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
+the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
+listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his
+bed.
+
+Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
+critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned
+by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took
+place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to
+watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward
+convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last agony.
+
+The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
+sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
+an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
+out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his
+bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death
+made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual
+satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by
+the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading
+might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently
+struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, “DISCOVERY OF THE
+ABSOLUTE,”--which startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite
+concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the
+secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a low voice, and
+Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar heard it.
+
+Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
+illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
+rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered
+with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, “EUREKA!”--I have
+found.
+
+He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
+died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
+last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
+Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!--by
+the fleshless fingers of Death.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+
+     Casa-Real, Duc de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+
+     Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Protez and Chiffreville
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Savaron de Savarus
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1453 ***
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1453 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE ALKAHEST
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say&mdash;May God grant it!
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE ALKAHEST</b> </a><br />
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE ALKAHEST
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      (THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+      arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those
+      of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so
+      naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent
+      land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest of
+      other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic preliminaries,&mdash;since
+      they have roused a protest from certain ignorant and voracious readers who
+      want emotions without undergoing the generating process, the flower
+      without the seed, the child without gestation. Is Art supposed to have
+      higher powers than Nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so closely
+      allied to architecture that the majority of observers can reconstruct
+      nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life, from the
+      remains of public monuments or the relics of a home. Archaeology is to
+      social nature what comparative anatomy is to organized nature. A mosaic
+      tells the tale of a society, as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus opens up
+      a creative epoch. All things are linked together, and all are therefore
+      deducible. Causes suggest effects, effects lead back to causes. Science
+      resuscitates even the warts of the past ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description, provided
+      the imagination of the writer does not distort essential facts. The mind
+      is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to man, the
+      past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been, and you seldom
+      fail to show him what will be. It is rare indeed that the picture of a
+      locality where lives are lived does not recall to some their dawning
+      hopes, to others their wasted faith. The comparison between a present
+      which disappoints man&rsquo;s secret wishes and a future which may realize them,
+      is an inexhaustible source of sadness or of placid content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+      over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given. Why
+      so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best conclusion
+      to man&rsquo;s uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its family ties,
+      and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its comfortable
+      well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to beatitude; but,
+      above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly sensuous happiness,
+      where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it. Whatever value a
+      passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life of feeling, it never
+      sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish nature, where the
+      throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that superficial minds deny
+      the heart&rsquo;s existence. The crowd prefers the abnormal force which
+      overflows to that which moves with steady persistence. The world has
+      neither time nor patience to realize the immense power concealed beneath
+      an appearance of uniformity. Therefore, to impress this multitude carried
+      away on the current of existence, passion, like a great artist, is
+      compelled to go beyond the mark, to exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo,
+      Bianca Capello, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini.
+      Far-seeing minds alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy
+      represented by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior
+      men. The life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the
+      conditions of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average
+      citizen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+      English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+      old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+      and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies no
+      weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan &ldquo;far-niente.&rdquo;
+       Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most essential condition),
+      patience, and the element which renders its creations durable, namely,
+      conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character lies in the two words, patience
+      and conscience; words which seem at first to exclude the richness of
+      poetic light and shade, and to make the manners and customs of the country
+      as flat as its vast plains, as cold as its foggy skies. And yet it is not
+      so. Civilization has brought her power to bear, and has modified all
+      things, even the effects of climate. If we observe attentively the
+      productions of various parts of the globe, we are surprised to find that
+      the prevailing tints from the temperate zones are gray or fawn, while the
+      more brilliant colors belong to the products of the hotter climates. The
+      manners and customs of a country must naturally conform to this law of
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and monotonous
+      in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky atmosphere through its
+      political vicissitudes, which brought it under the successive dominion of
+      Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it into fraternal relations with
+      Germany and Holland. From Spain it acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and
+      shimmering satins, tapestries of vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and
+      courtly bearing. In exchange for its linen and its laces, it brought from
+      Venice that fairy glass-ware in which wine sparkles and seems the
+      mellower. From Austria it learned the ponderous diplomacy which, to use a
+      popular saying, takes three steps backward to one forward; while its trade
+      with India poured into it the grotesque designs of China and the marvels
+      of Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+      tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of all
+      things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general storehouse
+      of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco brought into one
+      smoky outline the scattered features of its national physiognomy.
+      Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of their territory,
+      the Flemings became a people homogeneous through their pipes and beer.[*]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    [*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the products
+      and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country of Flanders,
+      by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for itself an original
+      existence, with characteristic manners and customs which bear no signs of
+      servile imitation. Art stripped off its ideality and produced form alone.
+      We may seek in vain for plastic grace, the swing of comedy, dramatic
+      action, musical genius, or the bold flight of ode and epic. On the other
+      hand, the people are fertile in discoveries, and trained to scientific
+      discussions which demand time and the midnight oil. All things bear the
+      ear-mark of temporal enjoyment. There men look exclusively to the thing
+      that is: their thoughts are so scrupulously bent on supplying the wants of
+      this life that they have never risen, in any direction, above the level of
+      this present earth. The sole idea they have ever conceived of the future
+      is that of a thrifty, prosaic statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came
+      from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
+      table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
+      porches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which comes
+      of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that craving for
+      liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the compactness of their
+      ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted on their nature made the
+      Flemish people a formidable body of men in the defence of their rights.
+      Among them nothing is half-done,&mdash;neither houses, furniture, dikes,
+      husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a monopoly of all that they
+      undertake. The manufacture of linen, and that of lace, a work of patient
+      agriculture and still more patient industry, are hereditary like their
+      family fortunes. If we were asked to show in human form the purest
+      specimen of solid stability, we could do no better than point to a
+      portrait of some old burgomaster, capable, as was proved again and again,
+      of dying in a commonplace way, and without the incitements of glory, for
+      the welfare of his Free-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life, which
+      will come naturally to the surface in the description of an ancient house
+      which, at the period when this history begins, was one of the last in
+      Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of Flemish life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+      modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides, and
+      the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old buildings
+      are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of a venerable past
+      are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and fashions and modes of
+      life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be left of that ancient
+      Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality, its traditional Spanish
+      courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland. Mansions of white
+      stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and the cosy comfort of
+      Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the capricious elegance of
+      Parisian novelties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about the
+      middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more than two
+      centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly one of the
+      great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of production, the
+      Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has never lost. For a
+      long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and were, from generation to
+      generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild of Weavers. When the great
+      city revolted under Charles V., who tried to suppress its privileges, the
+      head of the Claes family was so deeply compromised in the rebellion that,
+      foreseeing a catastrophe and bound to share the fate of his associates, he
+      secretly sent wife, children, and property to France before the Emperor
+      invested the town. The syndic&rsquo;s forebodings were justified. Together with
+      other burghers who were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a
+      rebel, though he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless execution
+      cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions in the
+      Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of martyrs gives
+      the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who punished revolt through
+      two generations, stretched his iron sceptre over Douai, the Claes
+      preserved their great wealth by allying themselves in marriage with the
+      very noble family of Molina, whose elder branch, then poor, thus became
+      rich enough to buy the county of Nourho which they had long held titularly
+      in the kingdom of Leon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which are
+      of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was represented
+      at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina, Comte de
+      Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of the immense
+      fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion over a thousand
+      looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand francs a year from
+      landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and the house in the rue
+      de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a fortune. As to the family
+      possessions in Leon, they had been in litigation between the Molinas of
+      Douai and the branch of the family which remained in Spain. The Molinas of
+      Leon won the domain and assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the
+      Claes alone had a legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher
+      was superior to the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights
+      were instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his
+      Spanish nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families exiled
+      under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth century, the
+      Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and traditions of their
+      ancestors. They married into none but the purest burgher families, and
+      required a certain number of aldermen and burgomasters in the pedigree of
+      every bride-elect before admitting her to the family. They sought their
+      wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or in Holland; so that the time-honored
+      domestic customs might be perpetuated around their hearthstones. This
+      social group became more and more restricted, until, at the close of the
+      last century, it mustered only some seven or eight families of the
+      parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and
+      magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of
+      their life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was
+      well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the
+      Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
+      objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,&mdash;the House
+      of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
+      which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
+      houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
+      their homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+      studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
+      which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
+      doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
+      bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette of
+      Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark upon
+      the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care taken of
+      it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note all its
+      details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+      color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+      side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+      resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white stone
+      ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the window
+      in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross, which
+      divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal bar,
+      placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes of
+      the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding at
+      the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with three
+      rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
+      projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of a
+      Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and diamond-shaped, were
+      set in very slender leading, painted red. The walls of the house, of brick
+      jointed with white mortar, were braced at regular distances, and at the
+      angles of the house, by stone courses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three, while
+      the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+      surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+      triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of a
+      cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver&rsquo;s shuttle
+      threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+      formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like
+      steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the rain
+      from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws of a
+      fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at the
+      base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the two
+      windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through which the
+      cellars were entered,&mdash;a last vestige of ancient usages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully cleaned
+      twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks, the crack
+      was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings, were dusted
+      oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The front of the
+      house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened color which age
+      had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as a choice old picture,
+      or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which would be ever new were it
+      not for the blistering of our climate and the effect of gases, whose
+      pernicious breath threatens our own health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+      produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+      brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover, the
+      very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the eye. A
+      poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little moss in the
+      crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of the brick; he
+      would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the red coping that
+      roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and immaculate air of this
+      facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave the house a tone of
+      severe propriety and estimable decency which would have driven a
+      romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to take lodgings over
+      the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung from
+      the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman, coming from
+      within, had admitted him through the side of the double-door in which was
+      a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door escaped from her hand and
+      swung back by its own weight with a solemn, ponderous sound that echoed
+      along the roof of a wide paved archway and through the depths of the
+      house, as though the door had been of iron. This archway, painted to
+      resemble marble, always clean and daily sprinkled with fresh sand, led
+      into a large court-yard paved with smooth square stones of a greenish
+      color. On the left were the linen-rooms, kitchens, and servants&rsquo; hall; to
+      the right, the wood-house, coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls,
+      and windows were decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The
+      daylight, threading its way between four red walls chequered with white
+      lines, caught rosy tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and
+      fantastic appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+      Flanders the &ldquo;back-quarter,&rdquo; stood at the farther end of the court-yard,
+      and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
+      ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-yard, and
+      two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as the
+      house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led at one
+      end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and were in
+      line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor entering the
+      latter could see through to the greenery which draped the lower end of the
+      garden. The front building, which was reserved for receptions and the
+      lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art and accumulated wealth,
+      but none of them equalled in the eyes of a Claes, nor indeed in the
+      judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures contained in the parlor, where
+      for over two centuries the family life had glided on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these days
+      be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to say that
+      he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by the manufacture
+      of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,&mdash;this Claes had a
+      friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges. The artist
+      had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich craftsman. Some time
+      before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van Huysum, grown rich himself,
+      had secretly carved for his friend a wall-decoration in ebony,
+      representing the chief scenes in the life of Van Artevelde,&mdash;that
+      brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This
+      wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained
+      about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van Huysum&rsquo;s
+      masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers whom Charles V.
+      determined to hang when he re-entered his native town, proposed, it is
+      said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give him Van Huysum&rsquo;s
+      great work; but the weaver had already despatched it to Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
+      Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr&rsquo;s memory, came to Douai to frame
+      in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore the
+      most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell for
+      nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes the
+      martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court of
+      Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as their
+      greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very high
+      mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last century; on it
+      now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five twisted branches, in
+      bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows were draped by wide
+      curtains of red damask with a flowered black design, lined with white
+      silk; the furniture, covered with the same material, had been renovated in
+      the time of Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large
+      squares of white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of
+      many oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
+      had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native Dutch
+      oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+      candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table stood
+      in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were symmetrically
+      placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there stood, at the
+      period when this history begins, two glass globes filled with water, in
+      which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and silver fish were
+      swimming about. The room was both brilliant and sombre. The ceiling
+      necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none. Although on the garden
+      side all was bright and glowing, and the sunshine danced upon the ebony
+      carvings, the windows on the court-yard admitted so little light that the
+      gold threads in the lapis-lazuli scarcely glittered on the opposite wall.
+      This parlor, which could be gorgeous on a fine day, was usually, under the
+      Flemish skies, filled with soft shadows and melancholy russet tones, like
+      those shed by the sun on the tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes, in
+      other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
+      it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+      woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+      looking out upon the garden. The sun&rsquo;s rays fell obliquely upon the house
+      and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the carved
+      panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo projected
+      through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an ordinary
+      painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment, would
+      assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full of pain
+      and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the feet stretched
+      out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses consciousness of
+      physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed in a fixed idea:
+      she was following its gleams in the far future, just as sometimes on the
+      shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds
+      and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair, and
+      her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A dress
+      of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment as to the
+      proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the folds of a
+      scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the light had not
+      thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show in preference to the
+      rest of her person, it would still have been impossible to escape riveting
+      the attention exclusively upon it. Its expression of stupefaction, which
+      was cold and rigid despite hot tears that were rolling from her eyes,
+      would have struck the most thoughtless mind. Nothing is more terrible to
+      behold than excessive grief that is rarely allowed to break forth, of
+      which traces were left on this woman&rsquo;s face like lava congealed about a
+      crater. She might have been a dying mother compelled to leave her children
+      in abysmal depths of wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human
+      protector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not nearly
+      so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of the
+      characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in heavy
+      curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
+      prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
+      sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
+      altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
+      small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
+      though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
+      dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of the
+      soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in this
+      strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply
+      curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior malformation; yet
+      there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition
+      between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light shone through it.
+      Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed the pride of noble
+      birth, their expression was one of kindliness and natural courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be questioned,
+      but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed, and lame, this
+      woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world obstinately
+      refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were men who were
+      deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its tokens of
+      ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was seemingly
+      irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+      Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
+      days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
+      emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
+      her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
+      nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
+      time powerless over destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at the
+      fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if to
+      invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to God
+      alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and the
+      shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then hotter
+      than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the moving of
+      chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to serve the
+      dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
+      and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her tears,
+      attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of pain that
+      was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the state of
+      happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from care. Whether it
+      were that the habit of living in this house to which infirmities confined
+      her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects that are imperceptible
+      to the senses of others, but which persons under the influence of
+      excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation
+      for her physical defects, had given her more delicate sensations than
+      better organized beings,&mdash;it is certain that this woman had heard the
+      steps of a man in a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants&rsquo; 
+      hall, by which the front house communicated with the &ldquo;back-quarter.&rdquo; The
+      steps grew more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this
+      ardent creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
+      would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led down
+      from the gallery to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
+      thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong step
+      produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, &ldquo;Fire!&rdquo; his feet
+      speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary gait ought
+      not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the dragging step
+      of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting spectator; but an
+      observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have felt something akin
+      to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed devoid of life, and
+      under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two iron weights were
+      striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once either the heavy,
+      undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of a great thinker
+      bearing the worlds with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet upon
+      the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood still for
+      a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the servants&rsquo; hall,
+      and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed in the panelling
+      of that room,&mdash;as was another door, leading from the parlor to the
+      dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the sensation caused by
+      an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the armchair; then a soft
+      smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by the expectation of a
+      pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna. She suddenly gained
+      strength to drive her terrors back into the depths of her heart. Then she
+      turned her face to the panel of the wall which she knew was about to open,
+      and which in fact was now pushed in with such brusque violence that the
+      poor woman herself seemed jarred by the shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not look
+      at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood erect in
+      the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his right hand. A
+      sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself, although it was
+      daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile, contracted the sallow
+      forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line which the frequent
+      expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply; her eyes filled with
+      tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family of
+      Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who had
+      threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood there at
+      this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he was only fifty;
+      and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable likeness. His tall
+      figure was slightly bent,&mdash;either because his labors, whatever they
+      were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column was curved by the
+      weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square shoulders, but the
+      lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though nervous; and this
+      discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once perfect puzzled the
+      mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous figure by some possible
+      singularities of the man&rsquo;s life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the Dutch
+      fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+      eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
+      which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes had
+      the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult causes.
+      The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and the
+      nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary tension
+      of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent, which made
+      the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full
+      of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a short chin, which
+      projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was long rather than
+      oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every human face a
+      likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in that of
+      Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse&rsquo;s head. The
+      skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire were
+      incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space, as if
+      to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
+      that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale face
+      furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of an old
+      monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose fires were
+      fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the inward
+      consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed to have sunk
+      in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible reaction of hopes
+      destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous fanaticism inspired by an
+      art or a science was evident in this man; it betrayed itself in the
+      strange, persistent abstraction of his mind expressed by his dress and
+      bearing, which were in keeping with the anomalous peculiarities of his
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
+      had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned and
+      the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the master
+      alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth trousers
+      were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry,
+      his greenish coat ripped at the seams,&mdash;completing an array of signs,
+      great and small, which in any other man would have betokened a poverty
+      begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the negligence of
+      genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads the
+      common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time and
+      wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital than the
+      worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices than for
+      genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits accruing from
+      the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the social world fears
+      to square accounts with the man of learning in his lifetime, preferring to
+      get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his misfortunes or his
+      poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
+      Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
+      companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
+      fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
+      ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
+      things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
+      to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
+      have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
+      man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: &ldquo;He
+      must have been very handsome in his youth.&rdquo; A vulgar error! Never was
+      Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater, had
+      he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience, of
+      Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,&mdash;where all was broad and noble,
+      and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
+      sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness complete:
+      and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic service, for the
+      world or for the family, was directed, fatally, elsewhere. This citizen,
+      bound to guard the welfare of a household, to manage property, to guide
+      his children towards a noble future, was living outside the line of his
+      duty and his affections, in communion with an attendant spirit. A priest
+      might have thought him inspired by the word of God; an artist would have
+      hailed him as a great master; an enthusiast would have taken him for a
+      seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
+      he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
+      was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
+      of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
+      simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
+      forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the eye
+      and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul, but
+      she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which gives a
+      foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the most
+      illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste had she
+      not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly pleasing the
+      man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably, and without
+      producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects of her
+      conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders only, one
+      of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the garden,
+      as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently said, in a
+      gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman&rsquo;s submissiveness,&mdash;for
+      between these two love had long since driven out the pride of her Spanish
+      nature:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
+      you have been to mass or vespers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands, and
+      waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor indifference,
+      only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those beings who
+      preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their youthful
+      delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to wound by so much
+      as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical disfigurement. No
+      man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices to blot out years of
+      happiness, and is the more cruel because it contrasts with the unfailing
+      tenderness of the past: our nature leads us to suffer more from one
+      discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in the midst of trouble can
+      bring us joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
+      said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where magnificent
+      tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped short as if
+      brought up against a wall, and cried out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should they not combine within a given time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he going mad?&rdquo; thought the wife, much terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth by
+      the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance back
+      at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the Duke of
+      Casa-Real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+      twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He came
+      to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent manners in
+      the society of Madame d&rsquo;Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince of Aremberg, the
+      Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen originally from
+      Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth won them
+      admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the tone to
+      social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends ready to
+      launch him into the great world at the very moment when that world was
+      about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more attracted by
+      glory and science than by the vanities of life. He frequented the society
+      of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who at that time was better
+      known to the world for his enormous fortune as a &ldquo;fermier-general&rdquo; than
+      for his discoveries in chemistry,&mdash;though later the great chemist was
+      to eclipse the man of wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated, and
+      became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as Helvetius,
+      and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit and love
+      exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor that
+      Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for those
+      mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take finishing
+      lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good society, which
+      in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+      Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither his
+      ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender, which
+      the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted to his
+      character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian salon
+      had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and the
+      little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man must needs
+      be without a home to remain in Paris,&mdash;Paris, the city of
+      cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
+      Science, Art, or Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine&rsquo;s pigeon to its
+      nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the Gayant
+      procession,&mdash;Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory of
+      Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family had
+      emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar&rsquo;s father and mother had left
+      the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time in
+      settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he needed
+      the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened upon his
+      mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in Ghent, or at
+      Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he met there suited
+      him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as to marriage; from his
+      youth he had been accused of never following the beaten track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady, then
+      living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
+      discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
+      destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she was
+      perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar&rsquo;s old cousin, at whose house
+      the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or not, she
+      had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying man; and he
+      told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents&rsquo; property to
+      enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name; thus preferring
+      his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future to his interests,&mdash;for
+      it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de Temninck would marry late
+      in life and without property when, young and wealthy, she had met with no
+      aspirant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de
+      Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
+      Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
+      listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
+      who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
+      handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
+      consented to allow him to woo her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly submissive
+      to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she feels within
+      herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility and true
+      feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of cruel
+      vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,&mdash;emotions,
+      terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore, to
+      be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
+      keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
+      lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
+      exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear that we
+      may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the hesitations
+      of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic propulsions which
+      give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the promptings to suicide caused
+      by a word, dispelled by an intonation; trembling glances which veil an
+      inward daring; sudden desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their
+      own violence; the secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering
+      voice; the mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that
+      divine discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so
+      exquisite a flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of
+      young love, and the weaknesses of its power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
+      The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as the
+      handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused her
+      pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide in the
+      depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women delight in
+      making known by their manners,&mdash;wearing it proudly, like a coronet.
+      The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared to express
+      her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and answer as it were
+      of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves, would they not be
+      in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful woman can be her
+      natural self,&mdash;the world overlooks her little follies or her
+      clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the noblest
+      expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her
+      gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing.
+      She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no faults; she is
+      denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never
+      given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment,
+      must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
+      exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the hearts
+      from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and stinging pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her, and
+      the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by the
+      world,&mdash;a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
+      apparent,&mdash;oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
+      of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
+      and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving and
+      beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone. Unhappy
+      and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
+      enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the love
+      thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to wear the
+      draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her Spanish eyes
+      grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her beautiful as
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
+      herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
+      domestic slave,&mdash;one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
+      had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied with
+      a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless value to
+      the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and the
+      permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes she
+      provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness of her
+      lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung from
+      Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
+      embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what he
+      loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each day of
+      life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married life the
+      handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest. After
+      gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending to
+      reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
+      ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
+      delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
+      Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a woman,
+      was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of being
+      loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling and sentiment
+      would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she fancied a grandeur
+      in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not believe; finally, she
+      was forced to admit that happiness, however short its duration might be,
+      was too precious to resign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the unexpectedness
+      of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar with a love that was
+      well-nigh chivalric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+      wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent in
+      the patriarchal house of the Claes,&mdash;the treasures of which were
+      increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+      several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+      mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother, the
+      Duke of Casa-Real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
+      fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light into
+      every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of character
+      which produce discord, and deprive their households of the harmony which
+      is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with some littleness or
+      meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering. One man is honorable
+      and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly, but obstinate; this
+      one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and uncertain; that other,
+      preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections as he would a debt,
+      bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the daily life of happiness,&mdash;in
+      short, the average man of social life is essentially incomplete, without
+      being signally to blame. Men of talent are as variable as barometers;
+      genius alone is intrinsically good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of the
+      moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are capable&mdash;the
+      one through weakness, the other by strength&mdash;of that equanimity of
+      temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the asperities of daily
+      life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity; in the other,
+      indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he is the
+      interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle and
+      application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is vacancy,
+      in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to take dull men
+      as the small change for great ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
+      delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like all
+      men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to develop all
+      its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of happiness, his
+      noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of grace. Though he
+      shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth century, he installed a
+      chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the risk he ran from the
+      revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart the Spanish fanaticism
+      which his wife had sucked in with her mother&rsquo;s milk: later, when public
+      worship was restored in France, he accompanied her to mass every Sunday.
+      His passion never ceased to be that of a lover. The protecting power,
+      which women like so much, was never exercised by this husband, lest to
+      that wife it might seem pity. He treated her with exquisite flattery as an
+      equal, and sometimes mutinied against her, as men will, as though to brave
+      the supremacy of a pretty woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his
+      speech was ever tender; he loved his Josephine for herself and for
+      himself, with an ardor that crowned with perpetual praise the qualities
+      and the loveliness of a wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+      self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary, and
+      not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty was the
+      only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was equal;
+      for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of his
+      hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
+      wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
+      intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite, but
+      she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the genius
+      of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind fanaticism
+      which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death. Balthazar&rsquo;s
+      own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his wife, and inspired
+      her with an imperious need of giving more than she received. This mutual
+      exchange of happiness which each lavished upon the other, put the
+      mainspring of her life visibly outside of her personality, and filled her
+      words, her looks, her actions, with an ever-growing love. Gratitude
+      fertilized and varied the life of each heart; and the certainty of being
+      all in all to one another excluded the paltry things of existence, while
+      it magnified the smallest accessories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
+      he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young&mdash;are
+      they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
+      go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To forget
+      that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of a moment,
+      but to love her because she is lame is the deification of her defects. In
+      the gospel of womanhood it is written: &ldquo;Blessed are the imperfect, for
+      theirs is the kingdom of Love.&rdquo; If this be so, surely beauty is a
+      misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in the feeling that a
+      woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as another is married
+      for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a woman disinherited
+      of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam, is true love, the
+      mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a sentiment for which the
+      day of disenchantment never comes. That woman has charms unknown to the
+      world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws herself: she is beautiful
+      with a meaning; her glory lies in making her imperfections forgotten, and
+      thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women in
+      whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,&mdash;Cleopatra, Jeanne de
+      Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
+      Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
+      famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
+      number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
+      of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives more
+      by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
+      limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
+      not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based? An
+      ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to herself
+      the inconstancy of her master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+      origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
+      up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
+      convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
+      the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
+      dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
+      dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to have
+      little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good result;
+      it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of mind
+      uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world, she
+      became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first years
+      of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least the
+      knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society: but he
+      was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the heart. Josephine
+      never forgot anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she
+      remembered the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her
+      evening studies nothing remained to her on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
+      but Madame Claes&rsquo;s understanding of the passion of love was so simple and
+      ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and the
+      thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she managed
+      always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that her
+      ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another so well
+      that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion, phenomena
+      arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the conditions of
+      life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not laughter, joy,
+      and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow,
+      man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering
+      either the means or the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
+      Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
+      Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she knew
+      how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth and
+      dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so near to
+      God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of her heart,
+      that her love was not without a certain respectful fear which made it
+      keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and
+      put her self-love into making the home life liberally happy,&mdash;preserving
+      every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing
+      that did not serve the purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with
+      the choicest food, and putting everything within those walls into harmony
+      with the life of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was born
+      in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+      Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal to
+      her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially during
+      the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those nearly
+      balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy of the
+      other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the moment when
+      this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet house begins,
+      were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1805, Madame Claes&rsquo;s brother died without children. The Spanish law
+      does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+      follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+      thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
+      seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes was
+      such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it, Josephine
+      felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that of her
+      husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so nobly given
+      everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage which worldly
+      minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance, seen from the
+      standpoint of material interests. The use to which this sum of money
+      should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to determine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
+      objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
+      worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
+      periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation followed
+      the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity of completing
+      a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became hereditary in the
+      family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery leading from the
+      family building to the reception-rooms on the first floor of the front
+      house, as well as some fifty others placed about the salons, were the
+      product of the patient researches of three centuries. Among them were
+      choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow,
+      Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and
+      Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were
+      authentic and masterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this Claes
+      was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact, each
+      and all had their mania, their passion,&mdash;a trait which belongs in a
+      striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a last
+      relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest known
+      collection of tulips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
+      and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,&mdash;a house that
+      was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
+      of price and glowing with rich color,&mdash;Balthazar Claes possessed a
+      country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
+      basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
+      old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
+      ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the richest
+      men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved the wisdom of
+      this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of property, the
+      Title of Succession would some day leave each child with limited means,
+      and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection. Balthazar, therefore,
+      in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife&rsquo;s property so as to secure
+      to each child a fortune eventually equal to his own. The house of Claes
+      still maintained its moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands
+      somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the country, but which in
+      ten years&rsquo; time, if well-preserved, would return an enormous value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+      appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife that,
+      by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to which the
+      provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when she lived
+      in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her. She received
+      every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month. Her friends
+      felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where, indeed, her
+      passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the education of her
+      children tended to keep her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this household,
+      which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of conventional ideas,
+      though the outward life of these two persons, secretly full of love and
+      joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s passion for his
+      wife, which she had known how to perpetuate, seemed, to use his own
+      expression, to spend its inborn vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of
+      happiness, which was far better than the cultivation of tulips (though to
+      that he had always had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of
+      following a mania like his ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+      underwent a fatal change,&mdash;a change which began so gradually that at
+      first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
+      night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt it
+      incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
+      submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar&rsquo;s confidence;
+      which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she had
+      never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of obtaining
+      an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still retained enough
+      of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a refusal. Besides, the
+      moral malady of her husband had its phases, and only came by slow degrees
+      to the intolerable point at which it destroyed the happiness of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several months
+      cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his character
+      showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness. Madame Claes
+      long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of the secret
+      employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he would reveal
+      it when it developed some useful result; many men are led by pride to
+      conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them known at the
+      moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely domestic happiness
+      would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar became aware of this
+      chasm in the life of love, which his heart would surely disavow. Josephine
+      knew her husband well enough to be certain that he would never forgive
+      himself for having made his Pepita less than happy during several months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
+      him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows no
+      separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment without
+      suffering. She waited for the return of her husband&rsquo;s affection, saying
+      daily to herself, &ldquo;To-morrow it may come,&rdquo;&mdash;treating her happiness as
+      though it were an absent friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
+      Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of her
+      husband&rsquo;s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an abstraction
+      even greater than the rest. Her woman&rsquo;s pride, hurt for the first time,
+      made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which separated her from
+      the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar&rsquo;s condition grew
+      rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his domestic happiness,
+      who played for hours with his children on the parlor carpet or round the
+      garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the light of his Pepita&rsquo;s
+      dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family
+      life, and even forgot his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+      preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood ran
+      cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to her that
+      she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was seriously
+      alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair, then to
+      feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of melancholy
+      reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling herself old
+      and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating consideration
+      for her in this secret occupation by which he secured to her a negative
+      fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his independence by allowing
+      one of those unspoken divorces which make the happiness of many a
+      marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
+      to read her husband&rsquo;s heart, and found it closed. Little by little, she
+      saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he neglected
+      his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could be no doubt
+      that he was given over to some passion that was not of the heart, but
+      which, to a woman&rsquo;s mind, is not less withering. His love was dormant, not
+      lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one word,&mdash;hope,
+      the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened that whenever the
+      poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her courage to question
+      her husband, she met with a few brief moments of happiness when she was
+      able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the clutch of some devilish
+      power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to return to himself. At such
+      moments, when her heaven brightened, she was too eager to enjoy its
+      happiness to trouble him with importunate questions: later, when she
+      endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly escape, leave her abruptly,
+      or drop into the gulf of meditation from which no word of hers could drag
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
+      its ravages,&mdash;at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
+      woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+      manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
+      him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
+      and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
+      changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime through
+      love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure remained,
+      but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and seemed as if
+      they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When the children had
+      gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say,
+      &ldquo;My friend, are you ill?&rdquo; and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he
+      answered, he would come to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched
+      suddenly from sleep, and utter a &ldquo;No&rdquo; so harsh and grating that it fell
+      like a stone on the palpitating heart of his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
+      Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world of
+      Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons were
+      aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
+      Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
+      expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
+      compelled to defend her husband&rsquo;s peculiarities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Claes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
+      him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
+      family but to that of his country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a town
+      whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other places,
+      not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a reaction in
+      favor of Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+      Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
+      of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
+      remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
+      household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day. But&mdash;unexpected
+      shock!&mdash;Madame Claes learned through the humiliating medium of some
+      women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance, that her husband
+      constantly imported instruments of physical science, valuable materials,
+      books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the highroad to ruin in
+      search of the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone. She ought, so her kind friends added,
+      to think of her children, and her own future; it was criminal not to use
+      her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal path on which he had
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
+      these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her apparent
+      confidence, and she resolved to break through her present system of
+      silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little scenes in
+      which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at such a
+      moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change, the motive
+      of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and replied:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you could not understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
+      complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
+      whose life she shared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, since it interests you so much,&rdquo; said Balthazar, taking his
+      wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, &ldquo;I will tell you that I
+      have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
+      earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry, the
+      aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+      affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself in
+      the way, or that Madame Claes&rsquo;s secret anxieties made her less agreeable
+      than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but her intimate
+      friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his laboratory all
+      day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only appeared in the bosom of
+      his family at dinner-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his country-house,
+      and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes he went to walk
+      and did not return till the following day, leaving Madame Claes a prey to
+      mortal anxiety during the night. After causing a fruitless search for him
+      through the town, whose gates, like those of other fortified places, were
+      closed at night, it was impossible to send into the country, and the
+      unhappy woman could only wait and suffer till morning. Balthazar, who had
+      forgotten the hour at which the gates closed, would come tranquilly home
+      next day, quite unmindful of the tortures his absence had inflicted on his
+      family; and the happiness of getting him back proved as dangerous an
+      excitement of feeling to his wife as her fears of the preceding night. She
+      kept silence and dared not question him, for when she did so on the
+      occasion of his first absence, he answered with an air of surprise:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Passions never deceive. Madame Claes&rsquo;s anxieties corroborated the rumors
+      she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her youth had
+      taught her to understand the polite pity of the world. Resolved not to
+      undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more into the privacy of
+      her own house, now deserted by society and even by her nearest friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the least
+      bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish life. At
+      first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar&rsquo;s valet,
+      Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing, but even
+      that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when Balthazar, unaware
+      of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of those that were
+      stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years, during
+      which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was apparently and
+      suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately reigned. Spanish by
+      race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within her when she discovered
+      her rival in a Science that allured her husband from her: torments of
+      jealousy preyed upon her heart and renewed her love. What could she do
+      against Science? Should she combat that tyrannous, unyielding, growing
+      power? Could she kill an invisible rival? Could a woman, limited by
+      nature, contend with an Idea whose delights are infinite, whose
+      attractions are ever new? How make head against the fascination of ideas
+      that spring the fresher and the lovelier out of difficulty, and entice a
+      man so far from this world that he forgets even his dearest loves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last one day, in spite of Balthazar&rsquo;s strict orders, Madame Claes
+      resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his life
+      was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing her
+      husband&rsquo;s labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible mistress.
+      She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory of
+      seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier alone had
+      that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent his
+      witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the outset,
+      she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of the way. For
+      a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with angry
+      impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her&mdash;all that
+      her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
+      servant was preferred to a wife!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
+      the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar&rsquo;s anger. She had
+      hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
+      roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be praised! you are still alive!&rdquo; he cried, raising her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
+      husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I forbade you to come here,&rdquo; he said, sitting down on the
+      stairs, as though prostrated. &ldquo;The saints have saved your life! By what
+      chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
+      just escaped death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I might have been happy!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My experiment has failed,&rdquo; continued Balthazar. &ldquo;You alone could I
+      forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+      nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Decompose nitrogen!&rdquo; said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
+      and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have a
+      general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is for a
+      woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves. More
+      forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when the
+      language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from letting
+      us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain as gladly
+      as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in love than
+      men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed
+      her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival
+      might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who
+      loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification like this
+      only proved Madame Claes&rsquo;s powerlessness and humiliated the feelings by
+      which she lived. She was ignorant; and she had reached a point where her
+      ignorance parted her from her husband. Worse than all, last and keenest
+      torture, he was risking his life, he was often in danger&mdash;near her,
+      yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know, his peril. Her
+      position became, like hell, a moral prison from which there was no issue,
+      in which there was no hope. Madame Claes resolved to know at least the
+      outward attractions of this fatal science, and she began secretly to study
+      chemistry in the books. From this time the family became, as it were,
+      cloistered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon the
+      family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which we find
+      it at the moment when this history begins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate women,
+      Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+      considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+      reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+      without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+      francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the transaction,
+      the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame Claes,
+      naturally much alarmed, to question her husband&rsquo;s notary and, disregarding
+      her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him guess them,
+      and even ask her the humiliating question,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Happily, the notary was almost a relation,&mdash;in this wise: The
+      grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the
+      same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the latter,
+      though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins. Monsieur Pierquin,
+      a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded to his
+      father&rsquo;s practice, was the only person who now had access to the House of
+      Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude
+      that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the
+      disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well known
+      throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that her husband
+      owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him with
+      chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and credit
+      of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies without
+      hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became due.
+      Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the chemicals
+      that had been furnished to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers of
+      chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which amounted
+      to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and Pierquin studied the
+      document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though some articles, entered
+      in commercial and scientific terms, were unintelligible to them, they were
+      frightened to see entries of precious metals and diamonds of all kinds,
+      though in small quantities. The large sum total of the debt was explained
+      by the multiplicity of the articles, by the precautions needed in
+      transporting some of them, more especially valuable machinery, by the
+      exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals, and finally by the cost of
+      instruments made to order after the designs of Monsieur Claes himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary had made inquiries, in his client&rsquo;s interest, as to Messieurs
+      Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was
+      sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur
+      Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results
+      obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.
+      Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases from
+      the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the whole
+      thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to the
+      very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the sum
+      borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which
+      Monsieur Claes was held. He then revealed the full extent of the evil,
+      telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her
+      husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the
+      patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value. As
+      for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his cousin,
+      with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had been
+      wholly unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was
+      working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two
+      years&mdash;one following the other with cumulative suffering&mdash;was
+      now added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.
+      Women have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do they
+      fear so much more than they hope in matters that concern the interests of
+      this life? Why is their faith given only to religious ideas of a future
+      existence? Why do they so ably foresee the catastrophes of fortune and the
+      crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment which unites them to the men they
+      love gives them a sense by which they weigh force, measure faculties,
+      understand tastes, passions, vices, virtues. The perpetual study of these
+      causes in the midst of which they live gives them, no doubt, the fatal
+      power of foreseeing effects in all possible relations of earthly life.
+      What they see of the present enables them to judge of the future with an
+      intuitive ability explained by the perfection of their nervous system,
+      which allows them to seize the lightest indications of thought and
+      feeling. Their whole being vibrates in communion with great moral
+      convulsions. Either they feel, or they see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame Claes
+      foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the deliberate
+      ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of Balthazar; if it
+      were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he was capable of
+      throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute indifference. But
+      what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal feeling and conjugal
+      love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman that the children,
+      equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come between them. Suddenly
+      she found herself at times more mother than wife, though hitherto she had
+      been more wife than mother. However ready she had been to sacrifice her
+      fortune and even her children to the man who had chosen her, loved her,
+      adored her, and to whom she was still the only woman in the world, the
+      remorse she felt for the weakness of her maternal love threw her into
+      terrible alternations of feeling. As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a
+      mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+      sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be
+      guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach him
+      for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness he had
+      shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his purposes? And yet
+      her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the law, told her that
+      parents were the depositaries and guardians of property, and possessed no
+      right to alienate the material welfare of the children. To escape replying
+      to such stern questions she preferred to shut her eyes, like one who
+      refuses to see the abyss into whose depths he knows he is about to fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+      household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+      ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed the family
+      on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the governess of her
+      children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly the luxury of
+      carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher families, so simple
+      were they in their habits, so proud in their feelings; no provision for
+      that modern innovation had therefore been made at the House of Claes, and
+      Balthazar was obliged to have his stable and coach-house in a building
+      opposite to his own house: his present occupations allowed him no time to
+      superintend that portion of his establishment, which belongs exclusively
+      to men. Madame Claes suppressed the whole expense of equipages and
+      servants, which her present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary,
+      and she did so without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any
+      pretext. So far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for
+      the future was more becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of
+      living called for no explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any
+      one who lives up to his income is considered a madman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+      birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and to
+      place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the Molinas,
+      the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days before the one on
+      which this story opens, the money derived from the sale of the diamonds
+      had been exhausted. On the very day, at three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon, as
+      Madame Claes was taking her children to vespers, she met Pierquin, who was
+      on his way to see her, and who turned and accompanied her to the church,
+      talking in a low voice of her situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;unless I fail in the friendship which binds me
+      to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position, nor
+      refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can hold
+      him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from the
+      mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he has
+      borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance of
+      safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
+      thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
+      them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
+      retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become of
+      you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
+      dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the house,
+      and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, &lsquo;The devil!&rsquo; It was the
+      first sign of reason I have known him show for three years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes pressed the notary&rsquo;s arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
+      &ldquo;Keep it secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
+      pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between her
+      children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her mind
+      was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The Spanish
+      sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her soul with a peal
+      louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was accomplished! Between
+      them and their father&rsquo;s honor she must no longer hesitate. The necessity
+      of a coming struggle with her husband terrified her; in her eyes he was so
+      great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of his anger made her tremble
+      as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must now depart from the
+      submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The interests of her
+      children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished tastes, the man
+      she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to common matters from the
+      higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from a smiling future and
+      plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists and great men? To her,
+      Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big with glory; he could
+      only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty hope. Then too, was he
+      not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk with such good sense on every
+      subject that he must be sincere when he declared he worked for the glory
+      and prosperity of his family. His love for his wife and family was not
+      only vast, it was infinite. That feeling could not be extinct; it was
+      magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into the
+      ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show him the
+      sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when he was
+      listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his love for her
+      would lessen! If she had had no children, she would bravely and joyously
+      have welcomed the new destiny her husband was making for her. Women who
+      are brought up in opulence are quick to feel the emptiness of material
+      enjoyments; and when their hearts, more wearied than withered, have once
+      learned the happiness of a constant interchange of real feelings, they
+      feel no shrinking from reduced outward circumstances, provided they are
+      still acceptable to the man who has loved them. Their wishes, their
+      pleasures, are subordinated to the caprices of that other life outside of
+      their own; to them the only dreadful future is to lose him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her true
+      life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And thus,
+      when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the deep
+      armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her children,
+      directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a message to her
+      husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished to see him. But
+      although the old valet did his best to make his master leave the
+      laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus gained time
+      for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to the hour nor the
+      light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs that could not be paid
+      renewed her past anguish and joined it to that of the present and the
+      future. This influx of painful interests, ideas, and feelings overcame
+      her, and she wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression of
+      his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more distracted than
+      she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she was magnetized for a
+      moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied of all expression, by the
+      consuming ideas that issued as if distilled from that bald brow. Under the
+      shock of this impression she wished to die. But when she heard the callous
+      voice, uttering a scientific wish at the moment when her heart was
+      breaking, her courage came back to her; she resolved to struggle with that
+      awful power which had torn a lover from her arms, a father from her
+      children, a fortune from their home, happiness from all. And yet she could
+      not repress a trepidation which made her quiver; in all her life no such
+      solemn scene as this had taken place. This dreadful moment&mdash;did it
+      not virtually contain her future, and gather within it all the past?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies the
+      smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily before the
+      masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the rush of thoughts
+      that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the feelings under the
+      weight of which her heart was crushed as her husband slowly crossed the
+      room towards the garden-door. Most women know that agony of inward
+      deliberation in which Madame Claes was writhing. Even one whose heart has
+      been tried by nothing worse than the declaration to a husband of some
+      extravagance, or a debt to a dress-maker, will understand how its pulses
+      swell and quicken when the matter is one of life itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband&rsquo;s
+      feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief; but to Madame
+      Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears. When she saw
+      Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards him;
+      then a cruel thought restrained her&mdash;she should stand before him!
+      would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the
+      glamour of love&mdash;who might see true? She resolved to avoid all
+      dangerous chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a
+      clear voice,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balthazar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his wife,
+      he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at intervals
+      along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium, and spat in
+      it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never forgot the
+      inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine, unable to find a
+      reason for this singularity, the constant care which her husband took of
+      the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable pang, but at this
+      moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside herself and made her
+      exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed her wounded feelings,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, I am speaking to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting a
+      look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like a
+      thunderbolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me, my friend,&rdquo; she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and put
+      out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back. &ldquo;I am
+      dying!&rdquo; she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid reaction
+      of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this attack.
+      Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door upon the
+      little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden staircase
+      that his wife&rsquo;s dress having caught on the jaws of one of the griffins
+      that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off with a loud
+      noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their chambers, but
+      the door of Josephine&rsquo;s bedroom was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, &ldquo;My God! the key,
+      where is the key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear friend,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. &ldquo;This is
+      the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+      heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; cried Claes, &ldquo;the key!&mdash;here come the servants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+      waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and left
+      the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving them
+      orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my dear life?&rdquo; he said, sitting down beside her, and taking
+      her hand and kissing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;now,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I suffer no longer. Only, I would I
+      had the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why gold?&rdquo; he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+      kissed her once more upon the forehead. &ldquo;Do you not give me the greatest
+      of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+      your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I see
+      that you are still the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What anguish do you speak of, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, we are ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruined!&rdquo; he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding it
+      within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard: &ldquo;To-morrow,
+      dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless. Yesterday, in searching
+      for a far more important secret, I think I found the means of
+      crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear wife! in a
+      few days&rsquo; time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness&mdash;I am
+      forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be
+      indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are full
+      of you&mdash;of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, enough!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;let us talk of it all to-night, dear friend.
+      I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; he resumed; &ldquo;yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+      into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave my
+      work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of the
+      heart&mdash;Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, you cannot understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+      studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read Fourcroy,
+      Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Spallanzani,
+      Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,&mdash;in fact, all the books about the science
+      you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you are indeed an angel,&rdquo; cried Balthazar, falling at her feet, and
+      shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. &ldquo;Yes, we will
+      understand each other in all things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I would throw myself into those hellish fires which heat
+      your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you thus.&rdquo;
+       Then, hearing her daughter&rsquo;s step in the anteroom, she sprang quickly
+      forward. &ldquo;What is it, Marguerite?&rdquo; she said to her eldest daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to dinner we
+      need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them to
+      the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+      ante-chamber as she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be complete,&rdquo;
+       she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch expression on her
+      face. &ldquo;My friend, go into your own room; do me the kindness to dress for
+      dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off this ragged clothing; see
+      those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric acid which left these yellow
+      edges to the holes? Make yourself young again,&mdash;I will send you
+      Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication, forgetting
+      that it was locked on his side. He went out through the anteroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I don&rsquo;t
+      want Martha,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a joyous
+      action, exclaiming: &ldquo;Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are in your
+      muslin gown and that pink sash!&rdquo; Then he kissed her forehead and pressed
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, papa has kissed me!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, running into her mother&rsquo;s
+      room. &ldquo;He seems so joyous, so happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for
+      the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object
+      of his search. This day is a festival for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear mamma,&rdquo; replied Marguerite, &ldquo;we shall not be alone in our joy,
+      for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put
+      on another sash, this is faded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the parlor, playing with Jean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are Gabriel and Felicie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear them in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father
+      has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look at
+      them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in
+      dressing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children through
+      the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw that they
+      were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted with gold,
+      commonly called &ldquo;darning-needles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be good, my darlings,&rdquo; she said, raising the lower sash of the window and
+      leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door of
+      communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+      abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in joyous
+      tones:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have
+      supposed her lame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When monsieur carried madame upstairs,&rdquo; said the old valet, whom she met
+      on the staircase, &ldquo;he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke the jaw
+      of that griffin; I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know who can put it on again. There&rsquo;s
+      our staircase ruined&mdash;and it used to be so handsome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don&rsquo;t have it mended at all&mdash;it is
+      not a misfortune,&rdquo; said his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened?&rdquo; thought Lemulquinier; &ldquo;why isn&rsquo;t it a
+      misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
+      that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+      Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of exchange
+      upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Stay and dine with
+      us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext, I
+      entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about it. All
+      is well,&rdquo; she added, noticing the lawyer&rsquo;s surprise. &ldquo;In a few months my
+      husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked at
+      Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden followed by
+      Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+      moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
+      lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
+      with a pretended air of indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
+      good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
+      pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
+      called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
+      and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce from
+      the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his habitual
+      custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to indicate depth of
+      character, while in fact they merely concealed the shallow insignificance
+      of a notary busied exclusively with earthly interests; though he was still
+      young enough to feel envy. To marry into the family of Claes would have
+      been to him an object of extreme desire, if an instinct of avarice had not
+      underlain it. He could seem generous, but for all that he was a keen
+      reckoner. And thus, without explaining to himself the motive for his
+      change of manner, his behavior was harsh, peremptory, and surly, like that
+      of an ordinary business man, when he thought the Claes were ruined;
+      accommodating, affectionate, and almost servile, when he saw reason to
+      believe in a happy issue to his cousin&rsquo;s labors. Sometimes he beheld an
+      infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might aspire;
+      then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned to make her
+      his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without malevolence,
+      not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness
+      which rendered all his better qualities incomplete, while certain
+      absurdities of manner spoiled his personal appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to
+      her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the
+      change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed
+      its meaning and tried to read her daughter&rsquo;s mind by a penetrating glance,
+      seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young girl&rsquo;s
+      manner showed complete indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics of
+      the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where his
+      wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his boots
+      as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man, and
+      foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation of his
+      appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs. Balthazar
+      entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly polished
+      top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk stockings to
+      appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons, a flowered white
+      waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his beard, combed and
+      perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his hands, all with such
+      care that he was scarcely recognizable to those who had seen him lately.
+      Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the
+      notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous
+      and affable presence was full of its former attractions. The weariness and
+      suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to the
+      bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening, Pierquin,&rdquo; said Monsieur Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+      wife&rsquo;s lap and tossed him in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See that little fellow!&rdquo; he exclaimed to the notary. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t such a
+      pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+      Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!&rdquo; he
+      cried, tossing Jean into the air; &ldquo;down, down! up! down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the ceiling
+      and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she might not
+      betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,&mdash;simple
+      apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see how you can walk,&rdquo; said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+      floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold buttons
+      which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a darling!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, kissing him; &ldquo;you are a Claes, you
+      walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?&rdquo; he said to his eldest
+      son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. &ldquo;Are you struggling valiantly
+      with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp hold of
+      mathematics?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+      that characterized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Pierquin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;perhaps you have something to say to me.&rdquo; He
+      took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, &ldquo;Come and see my tulips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to repress
+      the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable, so truly
+      himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed her,
+      exclaiming:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+      to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is long since I have seen my father so kind,&rdquo; answered the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his
+      arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next
+      room, the whole family following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with
+      paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken
+      side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of
+      family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs of
+      game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully arranged
+      here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage of strange
+      birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which evidently had not
+      been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the
+      square shape with twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed
+      stuff, common to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of
+      the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the
+      gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to
+      time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this room.
+      The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful antique
+      lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The glasses were
+      those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen in the pictures of
+      the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of faience, decorated with
+      raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the
+      English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware was massive, with square
+      sides and designs in high relief,&mdash;genuine family plate, whose
+      pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and chasing, showed the
+      beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards fortune of the Claes
+      family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion altogether Spanish; and as for
+      the linen, it will readily be supposed that the Claes&rsquo;s household made it
+      a point of honor to possess the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for the
+      daily use of the family. The front house, where the social entertainments
+      were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels, being reserved for
+      great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost to things which are, as
+      it were, made common by daily use. Here, in the home quarter, everything
+      bore the impress of patriarchal use and simplicity. And&mdash;for a final
+      and delightful detail&mdash;a vine grew outside the house between the
+      windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about the casements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are faithful to the old traditions, madame,&rdquo; said Pierquin, as he
+      received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+      Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread. &ldquo;This
+      is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle des
+      Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup of the
+      Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of Tournai
+      makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere else old
+      Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing; furniture is
+      made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets, lances, shields,
+      and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old
+      furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres
+      porcelain,&mdash;which does not compare with either old Dresden or with
+      Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I&rsquo;m Flemish to the core; my heart actually
+      bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture
+      for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact is, society wants
+      to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods
+      of art. When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously
+      done. During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the
+      Louvre. On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,&mdash;no
+      depth, no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on
+      their canvas. And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient school of
+      art! Ah, bah!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our old masters,&rdquo; replied Balthazar, &ldquo;studied the combination of colors
+      and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain. You
+      are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less
+      cultivated in these days than formerly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary&rsquo;s remark
+      that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the
+      brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she had
+      inherited from her brother,&mdash;hoping to be able thus to pay off the
+      thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes&rsquo;s mind
+      returned to the conversation, &ldquo;so they are discussing my work in Douai,
+      are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the notary, &ldquo;every one is asking what it is you spend so
+      much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a
+      man like you should be searching for the Philosopher&rsquo;s stone. I ventured
+      to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was
+      attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God&rsquo;s work out
+      of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man to
+      spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I
+      share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as
+      well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted
+      had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+      evil is to make me ridiculous,&rdquo; said Balthazar. &ldquo;Ha! so they think me
+      ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in
+      honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect my
+      dear townsmen bestow on wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+      forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+      brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his
+      tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his children,
+      and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and pertinence.
+      This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was certainly the truest
+      fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks and words expressed once
+      more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart which reveals to each a
+      delicious oneness of sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about the
+      table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of his secret
+      hopes. The sudden change in his master&rsquo;s ways was even more significant to
+      him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness he saw fortune.
+      While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come to share his
+      beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his master&rsquo;s researches
+      from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist when expected results
+      disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency of mankind towards
+      imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he
+      lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a
+      superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror, admiration, and
+      selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a lottery-office is to the
+      masses,&mdash;organized hope. Every night he went to bed saying to
+      himself, &ldquo;To-morrow we may float in gold&rdquo;; and every morning he woke with
+      a faith as firm as that of the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+      lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+      trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral
+      qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which
+      each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen
+      thread were called in Flanders, &ldquo;mulquiniers&rdquo;; and that no doubt was the
+      trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from a state
+      of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown misfortune had
+      again reduced his present descendant to the condition of a serf, with the
+      addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and its linen-trade was
+      epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of euphony, Mulquinier.
+      He was not without originality, either of character or appearance. His
+      face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and seamed by small-pox
+      which had left innumerable white and shining patches that gave him a
+      fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole demeanor solemn and
+      mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig which was smoothly
+      plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old valet&rsquo;s outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity
+      which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to his master, the
+      depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he maintained a
+      rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The denizens of the
+      rue de Paris watched him pass with an interest mingled with awe; to all
+      their questions he returned sibylline answers big with mysterious
+      treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he assumed an annoying
+      authority over his companions, employing it to further his own interests
+      and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler of the house.
+      Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply attached to the
+      families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for Balthazar. If any
+      trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event happened to the family,
+      he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer as phlegmatically as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in the
+      garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+      earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower
+      being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so arranged as
+      to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon&rsquo;s-head
+      tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named &ldquo;tulipa
+      Claesiana,&rdquo; combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal
+      looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar&rsquo;s father, who had frequently
+      refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions
+      against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant always in the
+      parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The stem was
+      enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions of the plant
+      were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose seven colors
+      were distinguishable from each other with the clearly defined brilliancy
+      which formerly gave such fabulous value to these dazzling plants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs&rsquo; worth of tulips,&rdquo;
+       said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the
+      many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty of
+      the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into jewels,
+      to observe the meaning of the notary&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good do they do you?&rdquo; continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar; &ldquo;you
+      ought to sell them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! am I in want of money?&rdquo; replied Claes, in the tone of a man to whom
+      forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence, during which the children made many
+      exclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See this one, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! here&rsquo;s a beauty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me the name of that one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a gulf for human reason to sound!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, raising his
+      hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. &ldquo;A compound of hydrogen
+      and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions, under the
+      same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold colors, each of
+      which constitutes a distinct result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so rapidly
+      that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as if remembering
+      that she had studied his favorite science, made her a mysterious sign,
+      saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not yet understand me, but you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am sure you do not understand him,&rdquo; said Pierquin, taking his
+      coffee from Marguerite&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;The Ethiopian can&rsquo;t change his skin, nor
+      the leopard his spots,&rdquo; he whispered to Madame Claes. &ldquo;Have the goodness
+      to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn&rsquo;t draw him out of
+      his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+      kissed little Jean in his mother&rsquo;s arms, and retired with a low bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round
+      the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was
+      causing her by whispering in her ear,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew how to get rid of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him see
+      the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her forehead
+      against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go back into the parlor,&rdquo; she said, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games
+      for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not notice
+      two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past nine, when
+      Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after helping her
+      sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in the deep
+      armchair, and her father holding his wife&rsquo;s hand as he talked to her. The
+      young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire without
+      speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child.&rdquo; She drew her down, kissed
+      her tenderly on the forehead, and said, &ldquo;Carry your book into your own
+      room; but do not sit up too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, my darling daughter,&rdquo; said Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife
+      remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last
+      glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose
+      outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness. When
+      night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of emotion,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife&rsquo;s chamber
+      as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The good
+      housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of virtue. It was
+      to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic superstition,
+      rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender feelings, where
+      simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and sacred in social life.
+      Any woman in Madame Claes&rsquo;s position would have wished to gather about her
+      the elegances of life, but Josephine had done so with exquisite taste,
+      knowing well how great an influence the aspect of our surroundings exerts
+      upon the feelings of others. To a pretty creature it would have been mere
+      luxury, to her it was a necessity. No one better understood the meaning of
+      the saying, &ldquo;A pretty woman is self-created,&rdquo;&mdash;a maxim which guided
+      every action of Napoleon&rsquo;s first wife, and often made her false; whereas
+      Madame Claes was ever natural and true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Balthazar knew his wife&rsquo;s chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+      material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of soft
+      emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time. The
+      proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of the
+      tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously
+      placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose
+      effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The gleam
+      of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of pearl-gray
+      silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly distributed
+      here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors of the tulips,
+      which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret of this choice
+      arrangement&mdash;it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell him in
+      words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of her joys
+      and woes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad
+      thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The silken
+      coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that
+      penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully drawn,
+      betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound
+      of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered husband. Madame
+      Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was trimmed by a long
+      pelerine with falls of lace that came about her throat, and adorned with
+      her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely glossy and fell on either
+      side of her forehead like a raven&rsquo;s wing, went to draw the tapestry
+      portiere that hung before the door and allowed no sound to penetrate the
+      chamber from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was sitting
+      near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive woman
+      whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives
+      expression to irresistible hopes. Woman&rsquo;s greatest charm lies in her
+      constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a weakness
+      which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments. Is not such
+      an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the rings of the
+      portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden rod, she turned
+      towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by
+      resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It
+      was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation
+      of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it
+      stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his
+      wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa. This was what she wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promised me,&rdquo; she said, taking his hand which she held between her
+      own magnetic palms, &ldquo;to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit, dear
+      friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage to study
+      a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to understand you.
+      I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how it happened, that
+      you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over night I had left you
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+      coquettishly delightful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+      greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+      gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to me
+      not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to keep it
+      from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the women
+      in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while Science has
+      depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone. I hate all that
+      comes between us. If you win the glory for which you strive, I must be
+      unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I&mdash;I alone&mdash;should be the
+      giver of your happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that first
+      led me into this glorious path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man!&rdquo; she cried in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in 1809?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I remember him!&rdquo; she exclaimed; &ldquo;I am often annoyed because my memory
+      still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals of hell,
+      those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped of hair, the
+      upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!&mdash;What awful impassiveness
+      in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any inn I would
+      never have allowed him to sleep here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Polish gentleman,&rdquo; resumed Balthazar, &ldquo;was named Adam de
+      Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+      happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give up
+      the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I think, by
+      means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as adepts.
+      When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the captain gave a
+      start of surprise. &lsquo;Have you studied chemistry?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;With
+      Lavoisier,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;You are happy in being rich and free,&rsquo; he cried;
+      then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a man,&mdash;one of
+      those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the brain or in the
+      heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be expressed in words. He
+      ended his sentence with a look that startled me. After a pause, he told me
+      that Poland being at her last gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden. There he
+      had sought consolation for his country&rsquo;s fate in the study of chemistry,
+      for which he had always felt an irresistible vocation. &lsquo;And I see you
+      recognize as I do,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced
+      to powder, each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed,
+      the same qualitative result.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he
+      said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general
+      meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of
+      tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred my
+      very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the anvil. I
+      will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me like the
+      live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah&rsquo;s tongue; for my studies with
+      Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Monsieur,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;the parity of these three substances, in appearance
+      so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of nature ought to
+      have a single principle. The researches of modern chemistry prove the
+      truth of this law in the larger part of natural effects. Chemistry divides
+      creation into two distinct parts,&mdash;organic nature, and inorganic
+      nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all animal and vegetable
+      creations which show an organization more or less perfect,&mdash;or, to be
+      more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which gives more or less
+      sensibility,&mdash;is, undoubtedly, the more important part of our earth.
+      Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple
+      substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and
+      another simple substance, non-metallic and solid, carbon. Inorganic
+      nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of movement and sensation,
+      denied the power of growth (too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus),
+      possesses fifty-three simple substances, or elements, whose different
+      combinations make its products. Is it probable that means should be more
+      numerous where a lesser number of results are produced?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;My master&rsquo;s opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have one
+      originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the knowledge
+      of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to rediscover.
+      Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again; we have
+      chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would apparently then rest on
+      four essential principles,&mdash;in fact, if we could decompose nitrogen
+      which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but three. This
+      brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the ancients and of the
+      alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to scorn. Modern chemistry
+      is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet little,&mdash;much, because
+      the science has never recoiled before difficulty; little, in comparison
+      with what remains to be done. Chance has served her well, my noble
+      Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure carbon, the diamond,
+      seemingly the last substance possible to create? The old alchemists, who
+      thought that gold was decomposable and therefore creatable, shrank from
+      the idea of producing the diamond. Yet we have discovered the nature and
+      the law of its composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;As for me,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;I have gone farther still. An experiment
+      proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+      mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which
+      lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first place, the
+      experiment itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic nature)
+      in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance). Sprinkle the
+      seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may reach the product
+      of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts from a known
+      environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis. Cut off the
+      stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity to produce
+      after burning them enough ashes for the experiment. Well, by analyzing
+      those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium, phosphate and
+      carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of
+      potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress had grown in
+      ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not exist in the
+      brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the cress, nor in
+      the distilled water with which the plant was nourished, whose composition
+      was known. But since they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we
+      can explain their presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of
+      a primary element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and
+      also to all those by which we environed it. Thus the air, the distilled
+      water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in the
+      cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one
+      common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;From this unimpeachable experiment,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I deduce the existence
+      of the Alkahest, the Absolute,&mdash;a substance common to all created
+      things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net meaning and
+      position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to be
+      solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine
+      humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,&mdash;the primary matter, the
+      medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all things
+      human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;It was at this point,&rsquo; he went on, &lsquo;that poverty put an end to my
+      researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of
+      your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to the
+      conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME
+      MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon. The
+      MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive electricity.
+      Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish those two
+      truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, monsieur!&rsquo; he cried, striking his brow, &lsquo;when I know that I carry
+      here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+      Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck
+      of men who fly at each other&rsquo;s throats at the word of command without
+      knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My body
+      comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and men; it
+      crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My soul has
+      no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged in one
+      idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,&mdash;for that
+      principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same
+      environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same
+      phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently
+      constituted exactly alike,&mdash;one produces yellow silk, another white;
+      and if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble
+      neither father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact surely
+      involves the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe
+      that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean worship
+      of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented Primal
+      Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the type of all
+      the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout all time has
+      symbolized God,&mdash;that is to say, Matter, Force, and Product,&mdash;are
+      they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some confused knowledge of
+      the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers
+      into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword,&mdash;in
+      other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that
+      transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is only carrying
+      onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had I found the
+      Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion. Ah!
+      while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to their death,
+      my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards
+      the Absolute, while I&mdash;I shall die like a dog in the trenches!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a touching
+      tone of brotherhood, &lsquo;If I see cause for a great experiment I will
+      bequeath it to you before I die.&rsquo;&mdash;My Pepita,&rdquo; cried Balthazar,
+      taking his wife&rsquo;s hands, &ldquo;tears of anguish rolled down his hollow cheeks,
+      as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had timidly
+      recognized without daring to follow them out&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her husband,
+      &ldquo;that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to deprive us of
+      your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness of a family!
+      Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross? did you examine
+      him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye which sent forth
+      the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could have torn you from
+      me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor father, nor master of
+      your family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a piercing
+      glance at his wife, &ldquo;do you blame your husband for rising above the level
+      of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple of his glory,
+      as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your heart! Ah, my
+      Pepita,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you do not know what I have done. In these three years
+      I have made giant strides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+      fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and she
+      wept as she listened to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many substances
+      hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals. Why!&rdquo; he
+      continued, noticing that his wife wept, &ldquo;I have even decomposed tears.
+      Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin, and
+      water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted
+      Josephine&rsquo;s features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him with
+      outspread wings far away from material existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This analysis, my dear,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is one of the most convincing
+      proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+      According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its hearth
+      is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction of mineral
+      bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case combustion is
+      nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner, again, vegetables,
+      which are constantly revived by combinations producing dampness, live
+      indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain vegetables which existed
+      before the period of the last cataclysm. But each time that nature has
+      perfected an organism and then, for some unknown reason, has introduced
+      into it sensation, instinct, or intelligence (three marked stages of the
+      organic system), these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose
+      activity is in direct proportion to the result obtained. Man, who
+      represents the highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only
+      organism by which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative&mdash;namely,
+      THOUGHT&mdash;is, among all zoological creations, the one in which
+      combustion is found in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may
+      in fact be seen to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and
+      carbonates which a man&rsquo;s body reveals to our analysis. May not these
+      substances be traces left within him of the passage of the electric fluid
+      which is the principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity
+      manifest itself by a greater variety of compounds in him than in any other
+      animal? Should not he have faculties above those of all other created
+      beings for the purpose of absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute
+      principle? and may he not assimilate that principle so as to produce, in
+      some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a
+      retort. In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little
+      phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too
+      much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of
+      genius is saturated to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the
+      street-porter, the dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the
+      force resulting from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our
+      feelings&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my love&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+      Conceive if I&mdash;I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his face
+      rose by degrees to inspiration. &ldquo;I shall make metals,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I shall
+      make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you be the happier?&rdquo; she asked in despair. &ldquo;Accursed science!
+      accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
+      sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! oh! God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He denies Him!&rdquo; she cried, wringing her hands. &ldquo;Claes, God wields a power
+      that you can never gain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he looked
+      at his wife and trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What power?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Primal force&mdash;motion,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;This is what I learn from the
+      books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+      Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
+      like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to them.
+      You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them, can you
+      combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga wine? Will
+      you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the atmosphere of
+      Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will nothing stop him?&rdquo; cried Pepita. &ldquo;Oh! my love, my love! it is
+      killed! I have lost him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity of
+      the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than ever
+      through her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she resumed in a broken voice, &ldquo;you are dead to all. I see it but
+      too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self; it bears
+      you to heights from which you will return no more to be the companion of a
+      poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would fain believe, as
+      a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you to make manifest
+      his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within your breast the
+      irresistible power that has mastered you&mdash;But no; God is good; he
+      would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores you, of the
+      children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone who is helping
+      you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness,
+      where the light of faith does not guide you,&mdash;nothing guides you but
+      a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it otherwise, would you not
+      have seen that you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three
+      years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth! I reproach you not; were
+      we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, &lsquo;Take it,
+      fling it into your furnace, turn it into smoke&rsquo;; and I should laugh to see
+      it float away in vapor. Were you poor, I would beg without shame for the
+      coal to light your furnace. Oh! could my body yield your hateful Alkahest,
+      I would fling myself upon those fires with joy, since your glory, your
+      delight is in that unfound secret. But our children, Claes, our children!
+      what will become of them if you do not soon discover this hellish thing?
+      Do you know why Pierquin came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs,
+      which you owe and cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I
+      might spare you the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must
+      sell our family silver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw her husband&rsquo;s eyes grow moist, and she flung herself despairingly
+      at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+      economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+      hereafter,&mdash;if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+      condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you, do
+      not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them, Science
+      may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a wretched life
+      in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood has sometimes been too
+      weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes wished I were not a
+      mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your life! And now, to stifle
+      my remorse, must I plead the cause of my children before you, and not my
+      own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth
+      her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her rival.
+      Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I caused you such grief?&rdquo; he said, in the tone of a man waking from
+      a painful dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,&rdquo;
+       she said, passing her hand over his hair. &ldquo;Sit here beside me,&rdquo; she
+      continued, pointing to the sofa. &ldquo;Ah! I can forget it all now, now that
+      you come back to us; all can be repaired&mdash;but you will not abandon me
+      again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman&rsquo;s
+      influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the
+      happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You
+      may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a
+      little for your good. I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.
+      Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love Chemistry better than you love
+      us. Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart;
+      but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half. Tell me, is not my
+      disinterestedness sublime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+      carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where women
+      reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently contracted
+      and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was habitual to
+      it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth of a love
+      which was once her glory, the full return of a power she thought she had
+      lost, she said to him with a smile:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may wish us
+      to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal
+      disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of looking into
+      futurity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+      poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based on
+      invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds class
+      as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The prophet sees
+      and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare and too obscure
+      to be subjected to analysis or observation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this,&rdquo; she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she had
+      so unfortunately reawakened, &ldquo;what you call an affinity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are neutral,
+      they produce no reaction&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! hush, hush,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you will make me die of grief. I can never
+      bear to see my rival in the transports of your love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of my
+      family. You are the basis of all my hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, look me in the eyes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole person
+      Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and muslin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I fall
+      back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must drag me
+      from them; I desire it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,&mdash;a
+      hand that was both strong and delicate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ask more,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science,&rdquo; she said, with
+      fire in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it&mdash;let Chemistry go to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This moment effaces all!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Make me suffer now, if you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears came to Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes, as he heard these words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right, love,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have seen you through a veil; I have
+      not understood you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it concerned only me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;willingly would I have suffered in
+      silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign. But your
+      sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate your
+      property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world
+      will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But
+      surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that his wife has
+      shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of this no more,&rdquo; she
+      cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. &ldquo;To-night, my Claes, let us
+      not be less than happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family, Balthazar,
+      from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as to the
+      cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did not enter his
+      laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to move into the
+      country, where they stayed for more than two months, only returning to
+      town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes determined to give, as in
+      former years, to commemorate his wedding-day. He now began by degrees to
+      obtain proof of the disorder which his experiments and his indifference
+      had brought into his business affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+      continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+      servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+      Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named Martha,
+      who had never left her mistress since the latter left her convent. It was
+      of course impossible to give a fete to the whole society of Douai with so
+      few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all difficulties by proposing to
+      send to Paris for a cook, to train the gardener&rsquo;s son as a waiter, and to
+      borrow Pierquin&rsquo;s manservant. Thus the pinched circumstances of the family
+      passed unnoticed by the community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+      cleverly able to outwit her husband&rsquo;s listlessness. She commissioned him
+      to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand staircase,
+      the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque to order one
+      of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the burgher tables in the
+      northern departments. A fete like that the Claes were about to give is a
+      serious affair, involving thought and care and active correspondence, in a
+      land where traditions of hospitality put the family honor so much at stake
+      that to servants as well as masters a grand dinner is like a victory won
+      over the guests. Oysters arrived from Ostend, grouse were imported from
+      Scotland, fruits came from Paris; in short, not the smallest accessory was
+      lacking to the hereditary luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The government
+      of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary fete of the Claes
+      usually opened the winter season and set the fashion to the neighborhood.
+      For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it a distinguished
+      occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was talked of throughout
+      a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes, the guests, the
+      smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the events that took place,
+      were discussed far and wide. These preparations now prevented Claes from
+      thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest. Since his return to social
+      life and domestic bliss, the servant of science had recovered his
+      self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the master of a household, and he now
+      took pleasure in the thought of surprising the whole country. He resolved
+      to give a special character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he
+      chose, among all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and
+      the most fleeting,&mdash;he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of
+      rare plants and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of luxury,
+      and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the Twenty-ninth Bulletin
+      and the news of the terrible disasters of the grand army in Russia, and at
+      the passage of the Beresina, were made known on the afternoon of the
+      appointed day. A sincere and profound grief was felt in Douai, and those
+      who were present at the fete, moved by a natural feeling of patriotism,
+      unanimously declined to dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
+      from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote, from
+      wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his promise,
+      and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the subject of
+      the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their meeting. The
+      letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did honor to his
+      patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this festal day
+      brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the House of Claes
+      shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite of its
+      magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands of six
+      generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+      occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
+      the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially by
+      the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of her
+      home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters of that
+      country loved to represent,&mdash;the head perfectly rounded and full,
+      chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow, gray
+      eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness which did
+      not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the high square brow
+      an expression of firmness, hidden at present under an apparent calmness
+      and docility. Without being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little
+      natural enjoyment. Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief
+      expressions of Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that
+      seemed cold at first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain
+      grace of outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic
+      happiness. By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet
+      explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was the
+      living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges,
+      whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters forbade
+      the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the
+      pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however, retired early; only
+      the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the
+      intimate friends of the family. Little by little the brilliantly lighted
+      house, to which all the notabilities of Douai had flocked, sank into
+      silence, and by one o&rsquo;clock in the morning the great gallery was deserted,
+      the lights were extinguished in one salon after another, and the
+      court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant, grew dark and gloomy,&mdash;prophetic
+      image of the future that lay before the family. When the Claes returned to
+      their own appartement, Balthazar gave his wife the letter he had received
+      from the Polish officer: Josephine returned it with a mournful gesture;
+      she foresaw the coming doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the weariness
+      and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after the family
+      breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little Jean, and talked
+      to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or embroidery or
+      lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the talk, and seemed at
+      last to get through with them as a duty. When his wife came down again
+      after dressing, she always found him sitting in an easy-chair looking
+      blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite undisturbed by the rattle of
+      their bobbins. When the newspaper was brought in, he read it slowly like a
+      retired merchant at a loss how to kill the time. Then he would get up,
+      look at the sky through the window panes, go back to his chair and mend
+      the fire drearily, as though he were deprived of all consciousness of his
+      own movements by the tyranny of ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It was
+      difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any length of
+      time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who have said
+      everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects of interest
+      outside the life of the heart, or the life of material existence. The life
+      of the heart has its own moments of expansion which need some stimulus to
+      bring them forth; discussions of material life cannot long occupy superior
+      minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the mere gossip of society is
+      intolerable to loving natures. Consequently, two isolated beings who know
+      each other thoroughly ought to seek their enjoyments in the higher regions
+      of thought; for it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the
+      immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has
+      accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable,
+      unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless
+      simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such charming
+      children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human phenomenon among
+      those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and comprehend all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+      critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+      suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never been
+      able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she ended by
+      mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of his
+      daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources were,
+      however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine&rsquo;s relation to
+      Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis XIV.; she had to
+      amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or the wiles of a
+      court which could play comedies like the sham embassies from the King of
+      Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues of France, Louis
+      XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the expedients of a
+      family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst of his grandeur he
+      felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had rocked the cradles of his
+      children was often at her wit&rsquo;s end to rock his, or soothe the monarch now
+      suffering from his misuse of men and things, of life and God. Claes, on
+      the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the clutch of a
+      single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of treasures for the
+      human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as artists suffer in the
+      grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the pillars of the temple. The
+      result was the same for the two sovereigns; though the intellectual
+      monarch was crushed by his inward force, the other by his weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+      nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her, she
+      called society to the rescue, and gave two &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; every week. Cafes at
+      Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which, during a
+      whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and liqueurs which
+      overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the Flemish dainties
+      and took their &ldquo;cafe noir&rdquo; or their &ldquo;cafe au lait frappe,&rdquo; while the women
+      sang ballads, discussed each other&rsquo;s toilettes, and related the gossip of
+      the day. It was a living picture by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed
+      gray hats, the scarlet plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth
+      century. And yet, Balthazar&rsquo;s efforts to play the part of host, his
+      constrained courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a
+      state of languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward
+      ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased it.
+      Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they
+      retarded Claes&rsquo;s fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though he never
+      spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for the
+      promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have the
+      melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick person. The
+      ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner with which he
+      picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the fire with bits of
+      coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When night came he was
+      evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from the importunities of
+      thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter another day,&mdash;seeming
+      to measure time as the tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to
+      cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see
+      the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings of the
+      mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the heart. She
+      dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to the laughter of
+      little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air of a man absorbed in
+      secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw him shake off his
+      melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem cheerful, that he might
+      not distress others. The little coquetries of the father with his
+      daughters, or his games with little Jean, moistened the eyes of the poor
+      wife, who often left the room to hide the feelings that heroic effort
+      caused her,&mdash;a heroism the cost of which is well understood by women,
+      a generosity that well-nigh breaks their heart. At such times Madame Claes
+      longed to say, &ldquo;Kill me, and do what you will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes lost their fire and took the glaucous
+      opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His attentions to his
+      wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing, grew heavy and inert.
+      These symptoms became more marked towards the end of April, terrifying
+      Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now intolerable, and who had all along
+      reproached herself a thousand times while she admired the Flemish loyalty
+      which kept her husband faithful to his promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+      hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring him
+      back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear friend,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I release you from your promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are thinking of your researches, are you not?&rdquo; she continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from remonstrating,
+      Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss into which they were
+      about to fall together, took his hand and pressed it, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+      than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+      sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave me,
+      to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those jewels
+      for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead; and,
+      besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer diamonds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The joy that suddenly lighted her husband&rsquo;s face was like a death-knell to
+      the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man&rsquo;s passion was stronger than
+      himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him to walk without
+      faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge of a precipice. For
+      him faith, for her doubt,&mdash;for her the heavier burden: does not the
+      woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to believe in his
+      success, that she might justify to herself her connivance in the probable
+      wreck of their fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion, Pepita,&rdquo;
+       said Claes, deeply moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered the
+      room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes and
+      remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children, whose future
+      she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the contrary, took
+      them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to give vent to the
+      joy that choked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband. The
+      future of her children, their father&rsquo;s credit, were two motives as
+      powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+      were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+      unhappy woman never knew another hour&rsquo;s peace of mind. The demon of
+      Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now agitated
+      her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation, and sat
+      half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed by the
+      very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those of
+      Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit and
+      aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for compliance
+      with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the Church, she
+      would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with terror at the
+      chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an expression of
+      despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in
+      her heart and mind. She beheld her children&rsquo;s future fleeing in that
+      smoke, but&mdash;was she not saving their father&rsquo;s life? was it not her
+      first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but even
+      this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings were too
+      keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or seemed at times
+      annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went through paroxysms of
+      jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the building,&mdash;a living
+      death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to her a species of
+      barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the breakfast-table or the
+      dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar&rsquo;s experiments were satisfactory,
+      and there were prospects of a coming success; if, on the other hand, the
+      man were morose and gloomy, she looked at him and trembled,&mdash;Balthazar
+      must surely be dissatisfied. Mistress and valet ended by understanding
+      each other, notwithstanding the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant
+      submission of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the
+      poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair
+      which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of the
+      mother trembling for her children. She now practised the doleful silence
+      which formerly chilled her heart, not observing the gloom that pervaded
+      the house, where whole days went by in that melancholy parlor without a
+      smile, often without a word. Led by sad maternal foresight, she trained
+      her daughters to household work, and tried to make them skilful in womanly
+      employments, that they might have the means of living if destitution came.
+      The outward calm of this quiet home covered terrible agitations. Towards
+      the end of the summer Balthazar had used the money derived from the
+      diamonds, and was twenty thousand francs in debt to Messieurs Protez and
+      Chiffreville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+      begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+      unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without result as
+      to the real object of his researches. There came a day when he ended the
+      whole series of experiments, and the sense of his impotence crushed him;
+      the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted enormous sums of money drove
+      him to despair. It was a frightful catastrophe. He left the garret,
+      descended slowly to the parlor, and threw himself into a chair in the
+      midst of his children, remaining motionless for some minutes as though
+      dead, making no answer to the questions his wife pressed upon him. Tears
+      came at last to his relief, and he rushed to his own chamber that no one
+      might witness his despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone with
+      her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man, these
+      broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the husband
+      and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past sufferings. The
+      victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said to her in a tone of
+      dreadful conviction: &ldquo;I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of my
+      children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill myself,&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband&rsquo;s nature enough to
+      fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an inward convulsion,
+      disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized her, and was all the
+      more dangerous because she controlled its violent effects beneath a
+      deceptive calm of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
+      does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin, but
+      an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de Solis, my
+      confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from ruin. He came
+      to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is enough to pay
+      the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all that you owe to
+      Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an account against
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
+      now white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam; they
+      have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus, to display
+      a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families: he thinks they
+      will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can recover our
+      independence, and out of the purchase money, which will amount to over one
+      hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to continue the experiments.
+      Your daughters and I will be content with very little; we can fill up the
+      empty frames with other pictures in course of time and by economy;
+      meantime you will be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+      mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector of
+      the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
+      Pepita&rsquo;s, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
+      convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
+      with a nervous shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dared not tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that between me and the Unconditioned,
+      the Absolute, scarcely a hair&rsquo;s breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
+      only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
+      centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,&mdash;in short, in a
+      vacuum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
+      passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices&mdash;she received a problem
+      in chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to the
+      parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened daughters, and
+      burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her hands, kneeling one on
+      each side of her, not knowing the cause of her grief, and asking at
+      intervals, &ldquo;Mother, what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor children, I am dying; I feel it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer struck home to Marguerite&rsquo;s heart; she saw, for the first time
+      on her mother&rsquo;s face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which only comes
+      on olive-tinted skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martha, Martha!&rdquo; cried Felicie, &ldquo;come quickly; mamma wants you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the livid
+      hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in Spanish,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Body of Christ! madame is dying!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+      footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha,&rdquo; said her
+      mistress. &ldquo;My poor dear girls,&rdquo; she added, pressing Marguerite and Felicie
+      to her heart with a despairing action; &ldquo;I wish I could live long enough to
+      see you married and happy. Martha,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;tell Lemulquinier to
+      go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name to come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha, both
+      devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their own
+      affections. Martha&rsquo;s dreadful announcement,&mdash;&ldquo;Madame is dying;
+      monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,&rdquo;&mdash;forced
+      certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier. He,
+      cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before one of
+      the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the boudoir of
+      a fine lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew how it would end,&rdquo; said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+      mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing himself
+      by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders, which
+      made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at Lemulquinier,
+      which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes made almost
+      venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a motion worthy of
+      Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large mouth with bread and
+      butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold. There&rsquo;s not
+      the thickness of a farthing between us and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don&rsquo;t you give &lsquo;em
+      to monsieur? he&rsquo;s your master, and if you are so sure of his doings&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans, and
+      heat the water,&rdquo; remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+      silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up; and
+      if you are allowed to have your way, you&rsquo;ll make ducks and drakes of
+      everything till there&rsquo;s nothing left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And monsieur,&rdquo; added Martha, entering the kitchen, &ldquo;will kill madame,
+      just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won&rsquo;t let him swallow up
+      everything he&rsquo;s got. He&rsquo;s possessed by the devil; anybody can see that.
+      You don&rsquo;t risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you haven&rsquo;t
+      got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when we are all in
+      such distress; the young ladies are crying like two Magdalens. Go and
+      fetch Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe de Solis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the laboratory
+      in order,&rdquo; said the valet. &ldquo;Besides, it&rsquo;s too far&mdash;go yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just hear the brute!&rdquo; cried Martha. &ldquo;Pray who is to give madame her
+      foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mulquinier,&rdquo; said Marguerite, coming into the servants&rsquo; hall, which
+      adjoined the kitchen, &ldquo;on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call at
+      Dr. Pierquin&rsquo;s house and ask him to come here at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! you&rsquo;ve got to go now,&rdquo; said Josette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order,&rdquo; said
+      Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a despotic
+      air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then descending
+      the stairs, &ldquo;can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;re forced to go, you old barbarian!&rdquo; cried Martha, as she heard
+      Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter&rsquo;s bidding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the family
+      whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two women and
+      Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of increasing the
+      loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the future
+      of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor in
+      misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine&rsquo;s
+      condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+      pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He saw
+      them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor, too weak
+      to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed abstractedly
+      at his daughters now attending on their mother, without inquiring the
+      cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or Jean attempted to
+      speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to Balthazar. Such a
+      scene was of a nature to make a young girl think; and Marguerite, placed
+      as she was between her father and mother, was old enough and sensible
+      enough to weigh their conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+      children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame Claes
+      foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar impelled her to
+      justify in Marguerite&rsquo;s eyes conduct that might, to the upright mind of a
+      girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The very respect which she
+      showed at this moment for her husband, making herself and her condition of
+      no account that nothing might disturb his meditation, impressed her
+      children with a sort of awe of the paternal majesty. Such self-devotion,
+      however infectious it might be, only increased Marguerite&rsquo;s admiration for
+      her mother, to whom she was more particularly bound by the close intimacy
+      of their daily lives. This feeling was based on the intuitive perception
+      of sufferings whose causes naturally occupied the young girl&rsquo;s mind. No
+      human power could have hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by
+      Josette, from enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of
+      her home during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes&rsquo;s
+      reserve, Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the
+      domestic drama. She was soon to be her mother&rsquo;s active confidante, and
+      later, under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes&rsquo;s watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter, to whom
+      she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards Balthazar. The
+      firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in the young girl made
+      her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle between father and
+      daughter whenever her own death should make the latter mistress of the
+      household. The poor woman had reached a point where she dreaded the
+      consequences of her death far more than death itself. Her tender
+      solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the resolution she had this day
+      taken. By freeing his property from encumbrance she secured his
+      independence, and prevented all future disputes by separating his
+      interests from those of her children. She hoped to see him happy until she
+      closed her eyes on earth, and she studied to transmit the tenderness of
+      her own heart to Marguerite, trusting that his daughter might continue to
+      be to him an angel of love, while exercising over the family a protecting
+      and conservative authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love
+      upon her dear ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not
+      willing to lower the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her
+      into the secret dangers of his scientific passion before it became
+      necessary to do so. She studied Marguerite&rsquo;s soul and character, seeking
+      to discover if the girl&rsquo;s own nature would lead her to be a mother to her
+      brothers and her sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes&rsquo;s last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+      disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+      recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly to
+      the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the care of
+      property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of the Absolute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+      monotonous beating of Balthazar&rsquo;s foot, which he continued to trot, wholly
+      unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was sitting
+      beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid, convulsed face,
+      turned now and again to her father, wondering at his indifference.
+      Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw the Abbe de Solis
+      leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing the court-yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That good young man!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Claes; &ldquo;I am glad to welcome him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother&rsquo;s lips. For the
+      last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred mysterious
+      feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts that had lain
+      dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to Madame Claes on the
+      occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of those
+      imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life; and
+      their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief sketch of
+      the two personages now first introduced into the history of this family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties of
+      her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
+      family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
+      elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at the
+      aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
+      face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes. He
+      walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a painfully
+      deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and obliged him
+      to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand. His bent
+      figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate, suffering
+      nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious purity.
+      This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning, his sincere
+      piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been successively a
+      Dominican friar, the &ldquo;grand penitencier&rdquo; of Toledo, and the vicar-general
+      of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French Revolution had not
+      intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family would have made him one
+      of the highest dignitaries of the Church; but the grief he felt for the
+      death of the young duke, Madame Claes&rsquo;s brother, who had been his pupil,
+      turned him from active life, and he now devoted himself to the education
+      of his nephew, who was made an orphan at an early age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
+      near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
+      Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led him
+      to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
+      Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
+      made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
+      those ideas, he remained there,&mdash;all the more willingly because he
+      was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
+      continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
+      censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame Guyon. His morals were
+      rigid, his life exemplary, and he was believed to have visions. In spite
+      of his own detachment from the things of life, his affection for his
+      nephew made him careful of the young man&rsquo;s interests. When a work of
+      charity was to be done, the old abbe put the faithful of his flock under
+      contribution before having recourse to his own means; and his patriarchal
+      authority was so well established, his motives so pure, his discernment so
+      rarely at fault, that every one was ready to answer his appeal. To give an
+      idea of the contrast between the uncle and the nephew, we may compare the
+      old man to a willow on the borders of a stream, hollowed to a skeleton and
+      barely alive, and the young man to a sweet-brier clustering with roses,
+      whose erect and graceful stems spring up about the hoary trunk of the old
+      tree as if they would support it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at his
+      side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate sensibility, of
+      half-dreamy innocence,&mdash;those fleeting flowers of youth which bloom
+      perennially in souls that are nourished on religious principles. The old
+      priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his pupil, preparing him for
+      the trials of life by constant study and a discipline that was almost
+      cloisteral. Such an education, which would launch the youth unstained upon
+      the world and render him happy, provided he were fortunate in his earliest
+      affections, had endowed him with a purity of spirit which gave to his
+      person something of the charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest eyes,
+      veiling a strong and courageous soul, sent forth a light that vibrated in
+      the soul as the tones of a crystal bell sound their undulations on the
+      ear. His face, though regular, was expressive, and charmed the eye with
+      its clear-cut outline, the harmony of its lines, and the perfect repose
+      which came of a heart at peace. All was harmonious. His black hair, his
+      brown eyes and eyebrows, heightened the effect of a white skin and a
+      brilliant color. His voice was such as might have been expected from his
+      beautiful face; and something feminine in his movements accorded well with
+      the melody of its tones and with the tender brightness of his eyes. He
+      seemed unaware of the charm he exercised by his modest silence, the
+      half-melancholy reserve of his manner, and the respectful attentions he
+      paid to his uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the old
+      abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking for
+      obstructions that might trip his uncle&rsquo;s feet and guiding him to a
+      smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+      generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There was
+      something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in the
+      obedience that never cavilled at the old man&rsquo;s orders; it seemed as though
+      there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had given him. When
+      the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in their own home or in
+      the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes lift his head with so
+      much dignity, as if to assert his metal should any other man assail him,
+      that men of honor were moved at the sight like artists before a glorious
+      picture; for noble sentiments ring as loudly in the soul from living
+      incarnations as from the imagery of art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+      pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de Solis
+      was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a man,
+      invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity. Entering
+      hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times to hide
+      their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in black and
+      looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face of a young
+      man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their mutual
+      astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each other in
+      their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again with one
+      impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal. Marguerite took her
+      mother&rsquo;s arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and find shelter
+      under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like motion to keep
+      sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his arm. The light was
+      cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures, and the
+      half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances which are
+      the joy of timid natures. Neither went so far, even in thought, as the
+      first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble which stirs the
+      heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from fastidiousness or
+      modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed to
+      overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+      half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a
+      child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have
+      thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love,
+      listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure flames
+      already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an irresistible
+      feeling, we love the places where our childhood first perceived the
+      beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the musician, and even
+      the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more shall we love the
+      being who reveals to us the music of life? The first heart in which we
+      draw the breath of love,&mdash;is it not our home, our native land?
+      Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of music which
+      wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and reveals the
+      distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an angel,
+      Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon Emmanuel, and
+      Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought on the canvas
+      with the living thought beside him. This involuntary and delightful homage
+      was understood and treasured. The old abbe gravely praised the picture,
+      and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and the maiden were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture gallery,
+      the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders, all
+      contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this vaporous
+      mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite&rsquo;s mind grew
+      calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray when Emmanuel
+      murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes. That voice, whose fresh and
+      mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart, completed the
+      revelation that had come to her,&mdash;a revelation which Emmanuel, were
+      he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often happens that the
+      man whom destiny employs to waken love in the heart of a young girl is
+      ignorant of his work and leaves it unfinished. Marguerite bowed
+      confusedly; her true farewell was in the glance which seemed unwilling to
+      lose so pure and lovely a vision. Like a child she wanted her melody.
+      Their parting took place at the foot of the old staircase near the parlor;
+      and when Marguerite re-entered the room she watched the uncle and the
+      nephew till the street-door closed upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which caused
+      her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion observe her
+      daughter&rsquo;s manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to the house on the
+      occasion of her illness, she was too violently agitated to notice the
+      color that rushed into Marguerite&rsquo;s face and betrayed the tumult of a
+      virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By the time the old abbe was
+      announced, Marguerite had taken up her sewing and appeared to give it such
+      attention that she bowed to the uncle and nephew without looking at them.
+      Monsieur Claes mechanically returned their salutation and left the room
+      with the air of a man called away by his occupations. The good Dominican
+      sat down beside Madame Claes and looked at her with one of those searching
+      glances by which he penetrated the minds of others; the sight of Monsieur
+      Claes and his wife was enough to make him aware of a catastrophe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children,&rdquo; said the mother, &ldquo;go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+      Emmanuel your father&rsquo;s tulips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie&rsquo;s arm and looked at the young man,
+      who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion. When all
+      four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other side, leaving
+      Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young de Solis, led him
+      to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the same manner year after
+      year by Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you love tulips?&rdquo; asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+      deep silence,&mdash;a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+      perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their beauties.
+      They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber in which I
+      live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that are softer to
+      the eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it was
+      of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness, the
+      sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you work very hard?&rdquo; she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with a
+      back, painted green. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;the tulips are not so close;
+      they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors are
+      dazzling; they give pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I work hard?&rdquo; replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+      smoothed the gravel with his foot. &ldquo;Yes; I work at many things. My uncle
+      wished to make me a priest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage to
+      oppose my uncle&rsquo;s wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+      recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription&mdash;me,
+      a poor orphan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean to be?&rdquo; asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+      herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+      gesture, &ldquo;I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender admiration,
+      &ldquo;except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am studying to be
+      a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I were principal of a
+      college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to live moderately, and I
+      might marry some single woman whom I could love. That is the life I look
+      forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a daisy in the meadows to these
+      splendid tulips, whose purple and gold and rubies and amethysts betoken a
+      life of luxury, just as the daisy is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal
+      life,&mdash;the life of a poor teacher like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have always called the daisies marguerites,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
+      Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he feared
+      were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said at last,
+      &ldquo;I dared not pronounce your name&rdquo;&mdash;then he paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A teacher?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+      undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+      taste for historical researches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;ah!&rdquo; so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a
+      foolish laugh and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I think,&rdquo;
+       said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother seems to me greatly changed,&rdquo; said Emmanuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and we
+      can only try to share them with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+      involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+      Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown to
+      Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the price
+      of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in Holland,
+      intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when poverty
+      should overtake her children. With much deliberation, and after weighing
+      every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one of prudence.
+      He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which he engaged to
+      make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the estimation of
+      others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with letters
+      of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service
+      to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the gallery
+      to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of
+      eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were
+      paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that
+      nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to
+      the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel de
+      Solis was commissioned by Claes to receive the price of the pictures,
+      which were thereupon packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale
+      from the people of Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he had
+      borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his chemical
+      researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its noblest ornament.
+      Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret; he felt so sure of
+      repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he reserved the right of
+      redemption. In Josephine&rsquo;s eyes a hundred pictures were as nothing
+      compared to domestic happiness and the satisfaction of her husband&rsquo;s mind;
+      moreover, she refilled the gallery with other paintings taken from the
+      reception-rooms, and to conceal the gaps which these left in the front
+      house, she changed the arrangement of the furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Balthazar&rsquo;s debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+      francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and his
+      nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats reserved by
+      Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the Dutch ducats, to
+      which the events of the Continental war had given a commercial value. One
+      hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were buried in the cellar of the
+      house in which the abbe and his nephew resided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+      incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock he
+      had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor and
+      debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely
+      absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken France,
+      nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, drew him
+      from his laboratory; he was neither husband, father, nor citizen,&mdash;solely
+      chemist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she was no
+      longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own chamber,
+      the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished joys forced
+      involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her, she moved into
+      the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring the room more
+      airy, more cheerful, and therefore better suited to her condition. The bed
+      in which the unfortunate woman ended her life was placed between the
+      fireplace and a window looking on the garden. There she passed her last
+      days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of her young daughters,
+      striving to leave within them the fire of her own. Conjugal love, deprived
+      of its manifestations, allowed maternal love to have its way. The mother
+      now seemed the more delightful because her motherhood had blossomed late.
+      Like all generous persons, she passed through sensitive phases of feeling
+      that she mistook for remorse. Believing that she had defrauded her
+      children of the tenderness that should have been theirs, she sought to
+      redeem those imaginary wrongs; bestowing attentions and tender cares which
+      made her precious to them; she longed to make her children live, as it
+      were, within her heart; to shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to
+      cherish them enough in the few remaining days to redeem the time during
+      which she had neglected them. The sufferings of her mind gave to her words
+      and her caresses a glowing warmth that issued from her soul. Her eyes
+      caressed her children, her voice with its yearning intonations touched
+      their hearts, her hand showered blessings on their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
+      received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
+      the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes&rsquo;s state of health seemed a
+      sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband&rsquo;s debts
+      put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes to
+      which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
+      occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
+      completely out of people&rsquo;s minds. During those two years Douai was so
+      often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either by
+      the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of the
+      country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were in
+      peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+      lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom the
+      winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband rarely
+      came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some hours in
+      the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength to keep up
+      a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the same, sat down,
+      spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon the room. The
+      monotony of this existence was broken only on the days when the Abbe de
+      Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
+      Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
+      not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
+      spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
+      words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them so full
+      of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual understanding
+      surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she was, back to the
+      young and happy past which gave such bitterness to the present. Emmanuel
+      and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling repressed the sweet
+      half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the saddened woman whose
+      wounds they instinctively divined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
+      nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
+      which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
+      and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development. There
+      are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of Madame
+      Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life has smiled;
+      these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time of joy, seasons
+      that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are other loves, framed
+      in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures are painful, costly,
+      burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or blackened by despair. The love
+      in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel, as yet unknown to them for love,
+      the sentiment that budded into life beneath the gloomy arches of the
+      picture-gallery, beside the stern old abbe, in a still and silent moment,
+      that love so grave and so discreet, yet rich in tender depths, in secret
+      delights that were luscious to the taste as stolen grapes snatched from a
+      corner of the vineyard, wore in coming years the sombre browns and grays
+      that surrounded the hour of its birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain, they
+      unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which deepened
+      its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter, shared by
+      Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and becoming by
+      anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium of communication.
+      Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl supplanted the honeyed
+      language of lovers; the sighing of their hearts, surcharged with joy at
+      some interchange of looks, was scarcely distinguishable from the sighs
+      wrung from them by the mother&rsquo;s sufferings. Their happy little moments of
+      indirect avowal, of unuttered promises, of smothered effusion, were like
+      the allegories of Raphael painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty
+      that neither avowed; they knew the sun was shining over them, but they
+      could not know what wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about
+      their heads. They doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow
+      them, they stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to
+      say to each other, &ldquo;Shall we end our days together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+      concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+      caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her comforters,
+      but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died through Balthazar.
+      However painful her husband&rsquo;s presence might be to her, lost as he was for
+      hours together in depths of thought from which he looked at her without
+      seeing her, it was only during those cruel moments that she forgot her
+      griefs. His indifference to the dying woman would have seemed criminal to
+      a stranger, but Madame Claes and her daughters were accustomed to it; they
+      knew his heart and they forgave him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was
+      seized by some sudden illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying,
+      Claes was the only person in the house or in the town who remained
+      ignorant of it. Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to
+      silence by their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the
+      danger of the being he had once so passionately loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
+      Claes was happy&mdash;she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
+      strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
+      brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
+      came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her cheek,
+      and to him she seemed well. When he asked, &ldquo;My dear wife, how are you
+      to-day?&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;Better, dear friend,&rdquo; and made him think she would
+      be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great that he
+      accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife was dying
+      a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his alone she was
+      living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+      year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
+      shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
+      presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to visit
+      them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two beings,
+      formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare intervals,
+      enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve which feed the
+      life of the heart; and finally there came a time when even these rare
+      pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon to the poor woman,
+      helping her to endure the void of separation, which might have killed her
+      had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became so great that there were
+      times when she was joyful in the thought that he whom she loved was not a
+      witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar in the evening hours, and
+      knowing him happy in his own way, she lived in the happiness she had
+      procured for him,&mdash;a shadowy joy, and yet it satisfied her. She no
+      longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced herself to believe it;
+      and she glided over that icy surface, not daring to rest her weight upon
+      it lest it should break and drown her soul in a gulf of awful nothingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
+      consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
+      condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of
+      the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
+      February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the words
+      of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+      hear the conversation, &ldquo;Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+      hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to protect
+      the future of your children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
+      she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
+      which affected him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
+      herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
+      wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
+      pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
+      courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+      Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her remaining
+      strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused and looked at
+      her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s management of the household since her mother&rsquo;s illness had
+      amply fulfilled the dying woman&rsquo;s hopes that Madame Claes was able to look
+      upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident that she
+      herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both women felt,
+      no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made between them;
+      the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the daughter, tears
+      flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes rested from her
+      writing, Marguerite said: &ldquo;Mother?&rdquo; then she dropped as if choking; but
+      the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask the meaning of
+      the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal the letter;
+      Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she might not see
+      the superscription.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can read it, my child,&rdquo; said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl read the words, &ldquo;To my daughter Marguerite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
+      hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling by
+      her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been brought
+      from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months was
+      professor of history and philosophy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear children, we must part!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You have never forsaken me,
+      never! and he who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother&rsquo;s
+      face, &ldquo;go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+      Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
+      urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, &ldquo;I will come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Madame Claes when he returned to her, &ldquo;take my sons away,
+      and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last sacraments, and
+      I wish to receive them from his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
+      understood her and sent Felicie away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma,&rdquo; said Marguerite who,
+      not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased the wound
+      Pierquin had given. &ldquo;I have had no money for the household expenses during
+      the last ten days; I owe six months&rsquo; wages to the servants. Twice I have
+      tried to ask my father for money, but did not dare to do so. You don&rsquo;t
+      know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the gallery have been sold, and
+      all the wines in the cellar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never told me!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Claes. &ldquo;My God! thou callest me to
+      thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite,&rdquo; she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, &ldquo;here is a
+      paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death, when
+      some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are without the
+      means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but take care of
+      your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few hours perhaps, you
+      will be the head of this household. Be economical. Should you find
+      yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,&mdash;and it may so happen,
+      because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret whose discovery
+      is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will no doubt need
+      money, perhaps he may demand it of you,&mdash;should that time come, treat
+      him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile the interests
+      of which you will be the sole protector with the duty which you owe to a
+      father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness and his life to the
+      glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act, his intentions are
+      noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him once more kind and
+      affectionate&mdash;YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say these words to
+      you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften the anguish of my
+      death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside your father; to cause
+      him no grief; never to reproach him; never to condemn him. Be a gentle,
+      considerate guardian of the home until&mdash;his work accomplished&mdash;he
+      is again the master of his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you, dear mother,&rdquo; said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+      eyelids of the dying woman. &ldquo;I will do as you wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the management
+      of the property and the household. If you married, your husband might not
+      share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the family and disturb
+      your father&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite looked at her mother and said, &ldquo;Have you nothing else to say to
+      me about my marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you hesitate, my child?&rdquo; cried the dying woman in alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the daughter answered; &ldquo;I promise to obey you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you,&rdquo; said the mother, shedding
+      hot tears. &ldquo;Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all. Happiness makes
+      us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to guard others who as
+      yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your sister may not reproach
+      my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose him&mdash;too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was gone;
+      the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too violent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis, and
+      the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the ceremony
+      was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor, looked about
+      her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is my husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those words&mdash;summing up, as it were, her life and her death&mdash;were
+      uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
+      spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
+      through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
+      last sacraments,&rdquo; she cried with the violence of indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; answered Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
+      him. Madame Claes&rsquo;s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband did
+      not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered, Josephine
+      colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?&rdquo; she said to him with an angelic
+      tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done it!&rdquo; he cried joyfully; &ldquo;Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+      substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
+      principle of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they tell me?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Are you worse? What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the matter, monsieur,&rdquo; whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant at
+      his conduct; &ldquo;your wife is dying, and you have killed her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and went
+      out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
+      Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
+      tears dropped from his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are dying, and I have killed you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What does he mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I only lived in your love, and you have taken
+      my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us,&rdquo; said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room. &ldquo;Have
+      I for one moment ceased to love you?&rdquo; he went on, sitting down beside his
+      wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy&mdash;too happy, for I
+      have not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
+      full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are not
+      yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
+      functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to all
+      that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married days;
+      such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen into fruits
+      which feed the soul,&mdash;confidence unlimited, the tender habits of
+      affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in time: we live
+      together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions from me. How is it
+      that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word, one look, one gesture of
+      reproach? And yet, you have sold your last pictures, you have sold even
+      the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing money on your property, and
+      have said no word to me. Ah! I go from life weary of life. If you are
+      doing wrong, if you delude yourself in following the unattainable, have I
+      not shown you that my love could share your faults, could walk beside you
+      and be happy, though you led me in the paths of crime? You loved me too
+      well,&mdash;that was my glory; it is now my death. Balthazar, my illness
+      has lasted long; it began on the day when here, in this place where I am
+      about to die, you showed me that Science was more to you than Family. And
+      now the end has come; your wife is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune
+      and wife were yours,&mdash;you could do what you willed with your own; but
+      on the day of my death my property goes to my children, and you cannot
+      touch it; what will then become of you? I am telling you the truth; I owe
+      it to you. Dying eyes see far; when I am gone will anything outweigh that
+      cursed passion which is now your life? If you have sacrificed your wife,
+      your children will count but little in the scale; for I must be just and
+      own you loved me above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have
+      cast into the gulf,&mdash;and what have you found?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children,&rdquo; continued the dying
+      woman. &ldquo;You are called in derision &lsquo;Claes the alchemist&rsquo;; soon it will be
+      &lsquo;Claes the madman.&rsquo; For myself, I believe in you. I know you great and
+      wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is mania. Fame is a
+      sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy with the unhappiness
+      of great minds, and your children will be ruined. I go before I see your
+      fame, which might have brought me consolation for my lost happiness. Oh,
+      Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let me be certain that my
+      children will not want for bread&mdash;Ah, nothing, nothing, not even you,
+      can calm my fears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear,&rdquo; said Claes, &ldquo;to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath,&rdquo; she said,
+      interrupting him. &ldquo;You owed us your protection; we have been without it
+      seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither wife
+      nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His virtues are
+      not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot
+      belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about him,
+      like a majestic tree&mdash;and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the
+      height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for this last day to
+      tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings of
+      desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo in
+      your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead, dead;
+      you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her joys.
+      Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But those poor
+      children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my anguish, the mother
+      still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lemulquinier!&rdquo; cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up and destroy all&mdash;instruments, apparatus, everything! Be
+      careful, but destroy all. I renounce Science,&rdquo; he said to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. &ldquo;Marguerite!&rdquo; she
+      cried, feeling herself about to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she saw
+      her mother&rsquo;s eyes now glazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MARGUERITE!&rdquo; repeated the dying woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+      invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
+      bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
+      forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the foot
+      of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose virtues and
+      exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone. Father and daughter
+      exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter judged the father,
+      and already the father trembled, seeing in his daughter an instrument of
+      vengeance. Though memories of the love with which his Pepita had filled
+      his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to her dying words a sacred
+      authority whose voice his soul must ever hear, yet Balthazar knew himself
+      helpless in the grasp of his attendant genius; he heard the terrible
+      mutterings of his passion, denying him the strength to carry his
+      repentance into action: he feared himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the minds
+      of all,&mdash;the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
+      The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
+      woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to enter
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
+      hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
+      the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by
+      ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers, anathematizes those
+      who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion (the hypocrite!) in
+      weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a few
+      flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist, doing
+      homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and spades.
+      Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,&mdash;the fi, fo, fum of collective
+      grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with neither more nor less
+      of feeling, at all hours and in every town in France,&mdash;they proceeded
+      to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin was the first to observe
+      that the death of this excellent woman was a mercy, for her husband had
+      made her unhappy; and it was even more fortunate for her children: she was
+      unable while living to refuse her money to the husband she adored; but now
+      that she was dead, Claes was debarred from touching it. Thereupon all
+      present calculated the fortune of that poor Madame Claes, wondered how
+      much she had laid by (had she, in fact, laid by anything?), made an
+      inventory of her jewels, rummaged in her wardrobe, peeped into her
+      drawers, while the afflicted family were still weeping and praying around
+      her death-bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes&rsquo;s possessions
+      in her own right&mdash;to use the notarial phrase&mdash;might still be
+      recovered, and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of francs;
+      basing this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,&mdash;whose timber,
+      counting the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval growths, and the
+      recent plantations, had immensely increased in value during the last
+      twelve years,&mdash;and partly on Balthazar&rsquo;s own property, of which
+      enough remained to &ldquo;cover&rdquo; the claims of his children, if the liquidation
+      of their mother&rsquo;s fortune did not yield sufficient to release him.
+      Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin&rsquo;s slang, &ldquo;a
+      four-hundred-thousand-franc girl.&rdquo; &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;if she doesn&rsquo;t marry,&mdash;a
+      step which would of course separate her interests and permit us to sell
+      the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the minor children
+      and reinvest it where the father can&rsquo;t lay hands on it,&mdash;Claes is
+      likely to ruin them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy to
+      win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the lawyer the
+      compliment of suggesting that he might be the man. Pierquin, however,
+      found so many good reasons to reject the suggested matches as unworthy of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s position, that the confabulators glanced at each other and
+      smiled, and took malicious pleasure in prolonging this truly provincial
+      method of annoyance. Pierquin had already decided that Madame Claes&rsquo;s
+      death would have a favorable effect upon his suit, and he began mentally
+      to cut up the body in his own interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That good woman,&rdquo; he said to himself as he went home to bed, &ldquo;was as
+      proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey, hey!
+      why couldn&rsquo;t I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere Claes is
+      drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after convincing
+      Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her brothers and
+      sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be glad to get rid of
+      a girl who is likely to thwart him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+      reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded for
+      his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the provinces
+      there was certainly not a better brought-up or more delicately lovely
+      young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her grace, were like
+      those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to name lest he should
+      betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments were lofty, her principles
+      religious, she would undoubtedly make him a faithful wife: moreover, she
+      not only flattered the vanity which influences every man more or less in
+      the choice of a wife, but she gratified his pride by the high
+      consideration which her family, doubly ennobled, enjoyed in Flanders,&mdash;a
+      consideration which her husband of course would share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several thousand-franc
+      notes, which he offered with great friendliness to Balthazar, so as to
+      relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst of his grief. Touched by
+      this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he thought, praise his goodness
+      and his personal qualities to Marguerite. In this he was mistaken.
+      Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was a very natural action, and
+      their sorrow was too absorbing to let them even think of the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed to
+      blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,&mdash;less on
+      account of the Science which might have excused him, than for the remorse
+      which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by appearances: it
+      takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic worth of the
+      article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species of enjoyment,
+      which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its thirst for emotions
+      it acquits without judging the man who raises a laugh, or he who makes it
+      weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+      household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+      moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority with
+      docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of her skin,
+      just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the gentleness and
+      patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs of feminine
+      courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels appointed to shed
+      peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving palms. But although
+      she trained herself, through a premature perception of duty, to hide her
+      personal grief, it was none the less bitter; her calm exterior was not in
+      keeping with the deep trouble of her thoughts, and she was destined to
+      undergo, too early in life, those terrible outbursts of feeling which no
+      heart is wholly able to subdue: her father was to hold her incessantly
+      under the pressure of natural youthful generosity on the one hand, and the
+      dictates of imperious duty on the other. The cares which came upon her the
+      very day of her mother&rsquo;s death threw her into a struggle with the
+      interests of life at an age when young girls are thinking only of its
+      pleasures. Dreadful discipline of suffering, which is never lacking to
+      angelic natures!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+      passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few days
+      after Madame Claes&rsquo;s death he took occasion to speak to Marguerite, and
+      began operations with a cleverness which might have succeeded if love had
+      not given her the power of clear insight and saved her from mistaking
+      appearances that were all the more specious because Pierquin displayed his
+      natural kindheartedness,&mdash;the kindliness of a notary who thinks
+      himself loving while he protects a client&rsquo;s money. Relying on his rather
+      distant relationship and his constant habit of managing the business and
+      sharing the secrets of the Claes family, sure of the esteem and friendship
+      of the father, greatly assisted by the careless inattention of that
+      servant of science who took no thought for the marriage of his daughter,
+      and not suspecting that Marguerite could prefer another,&mdash;Pierquin
+      unguardedly enabled her to form a judgment on a suit in which there was no
+      passion except that of self-interest, always odious to a young soul, and
+      which he was not clever enough to conceal. It was he who on this occasion
+      was naively above-board, it was she who dissimulated,&mdash;simply because
+      he thought he was dealing with a defenceless girl, and wholly misconceived
+      the privileges of weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking about
+      the paths of the little garden, &ldquo;you know my heart, you understand how
+      truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which absorb you at this
+      moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart
+      only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I would
+      fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I suffer
+      deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant with your
+      state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much about you during
+      the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal delusion the fortune
+      of your brothers and sister and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to
+      save your family from complete ruin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do?&rdquo; she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry,&rdquo; answered Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not marry,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you will marry,&rdquo; replied the notary, &ldquo;when you have soberly thought
+      over the critical position in which you are placed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can my marriage save&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin,&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      interrupting her. &ldquo;Marriage will emancipate you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I be emancipated?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your property,
+      my dear little cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer in a tone of triumph. &ldquo;If you
+      marry you take your share of your mother&rsquo;s property. To give it to you,
+      the whole property must be liquidated; to do that, it becomes necessary to
+      sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the proceeds will be capitalized,
+      and your father, as guardian, will be compelled to invest the fortune of
+      his children in such a way that Chemistry can&rsquo;t get hold of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I do not marry, what will happen?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the notary, &ldquo;your father will manage your estate as he
+      pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the timber of
+      the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as the little Saint
+      Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred thousand francs; but
+      from one day to another you are not sure your father won&rsquo;t cut it down,
+      and then your thirteen hundred acres are not worth three hundred thousand
+      francs. Isn&rsquo;t it better to avoid this almost certain danger by at once
+      compelling the division of property on your marriage? If the forest is
+      sold now, while Chemistry has gone to sleep, your father will put the
+      proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The Funds are at 59; those dear children
+      will get nearly five thousand francs a year for every fifty thousand
+      francs: and, inasmuch as the property of minors cannot be sold out, your
+      brothers and sister will find their fortunes doubled in value by the time
+      they come of age. Whereas, in the other case,&mdash;faith, no one knows
+      what may happen: your father has already impaired your mother&rsquo;s property;
+      we shall find out the deficit when we come to make the inventory. If he is
+      in debt to her estate, you will take a mortgage on his, and in that way
+      something may be recovered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For shame!&rdquo; said Marguerite. &ldquo;It would be an outrage on my father. It is
+      not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have forgotten
+      them. My father is incapable of robbing his children,&rdquo; she continued,
+      giving way to tears of distress. &ldquo;You misunderstand him, Monsieur
+      Pierquin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are ruined; is that what you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand
+      which he placed upon his heart, &ldquo;I should fail of my duty if I did not
+      persist in this matter. Your interests alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, &ldquo;the true
+      interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin,&rdquo; he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+      escaping him, &ldquo;you commit suicide; you fling your mother&rsquo;s property into a
+      gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know not how I
+      love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball, three years
+      ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it speaks to you of
+      your own interests, Marguerite.&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;Yes, we must call a family
+      council and emancipate you&mdash;without consulting you,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is it to be emancipated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to enjoy your own rights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+      marry? and whom should I marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+      contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money, that
+      Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would marry the person who&mdash;pleases you&mdash;the most,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;A husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business.
+      You are now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him
+      all alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister when
+      the time comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! the obstinate creature,&rdquo; thought Pierquin. &ldquo;No, you will not
+      resist him,&rdquo; he said aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us end the subject,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I will
+      prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster which
+      all the town foresees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you for the interest you take in me,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but I
+      entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+      pain to my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+      compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring, his
+      glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry in
+      which Emmanuel&rsquo;s sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be said, or
+      what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose effects never
+      deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the passionate gestures of a
+      lover may be imitated; a young girl can be deluded by a clever comedian;
+      but to succeed, the man must be alone in the field. If the young girl has
+      another soul beside her whose pulses vibrate in unison with hers, she is
+      able to distinguish the expressions of a true love. Emmanuel, like
+      Marguerite, felt the influence of the chords which, from the time of their
+      first meeting had gathered ominously about their heads, hiding from their
+      eyes the blue skies of love. His feeling for the Elect of his heart was an
+      idolatry which the total absence of hope rendered gentle and mysterious in
+      its manifestations. Socially too far removed from Mademoiselle Claes by
+      his want of fortune, with nothing but a noble name to offer her, he saw no
+      chance of ever being her husband. Yet he had always hoped for certain
+      encouragements which Marguerite refused to give before the failing eyes of
+      her dying mother. Both equally pure, they had never said to one another a
+      word of love. Their joys were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They
+      trembled apart, though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same
+      hope. They seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely
+      belonged to the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of
+      the sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+      would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+      mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+      vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love that
+      even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed in each
+      other&rsquo;s hearts that both were ready to make the greatest sacrifices, which
+      were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could expect to taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Madame Claes&rsquo;s death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning. The
+      tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first, were
+      now black; the few lights were veiled by tears. Marguerite&rsquo;s reserve
+      changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by her mother.
+      With more freedom of action, she nevertheless became more distant.
+      Emmanuel shared his beloved&rsquo;s grief, comprehending that the slightest word
+      or wish of love at such a time transgressed the laws of the heart. Their
+      love was therefore more concealed than it had ever been. These tender
+      souls sounded the same note: held apart by grief, as formerly by the
+      timidities of youth and by respect for the sufferings of the mother, they
+      clung to the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute eloquence of
+      devoted actions, the constant unison of thoughts,&mdash;divine harmonies
+      of youth, the first steps of a love still in its infancy. Emmanuel came
+      every morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he never entered
+      the dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring a letter from
+      Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in. His first glance at the
+      young girl contained a thousand sympathetic thoughts; it told her that he
+      suffered under these conventional restraints, that he never left her, he
+      was always with her, he shared her grief. He shed the tears of his own
+      pain into the soul of his dear one by a look that was marred by no selfish
+      reservation. His good heart lived so completely in the present, he clung
+      so firmly to a happiness which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite
+      sometimes reproached herself for not generously holding out her hand and
+      saying, &ldquo;Let us at least be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting
+      patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the
+      multitude when judging of women. He believed that the words marriage,
+      freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and
+      flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her coldness
+      was mere dissimulation. But surround her as he would with gallant
+      attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man accustomed to
+      manage the private affairs of many families with a high hand. He
+      discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to his
+      profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving
+      behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity. His
+      tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped his feigned melancholy at the
+      door when he put on his overshoes, or took his umbrella. He used the tone
+      his long intimacy authorized as an instrument to work himself still
+      further into the bosom of the family, and bring Marguerite to a marriage
+      which the whole town was beginning to foresee. The true, devoted,
+      respectful love formed a striking contrast to its selfish, calculating
+      semblance. Each man&rsquo;s conduct was homogenous: one feigned a passion and
+      seized every advantage to gain the prize; the other hid his love and
+      trembled lest he should betray his devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the same
+      day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom she had
+      any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which she was
+      condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to those who might
+      think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a fine morning in
+      April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur Claes was going out.
+      The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to Balthazar that he spent
+      part of every day in walking about the ramparts. Emmanuel made a motion as
+      if to follow him, then he hesitated, seemed to gather up his courage,
+      looked at Marguerite and remained. The young girl felt sure that he wished
+      to speak with her, and asked him to go into the garden; then she sent
+      Felicie to Martha, who was sewing in the antechamber on the upper floor,
+      and seated herself on a garden-seat in full view of her sister and the old
+      duenna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by science,&rdquo;
+       began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed the
+      court-yard. &ldquo;Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man who has
+      lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he gazes
+      without seeing anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every sorrow has its own expression,&rdquo; said Marguerite, checking her
+      tears. &ldquo;What is it you wish to say to me?&rdquo; she added after a pause, coldly
+      and with dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, &ldquo;I scarcely know
+      if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think only of my
+      desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a teacher to be
+      interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother Gabriel is over fifteen;
+      he is in the second class; it is now necessary to direct his studies in
+      the line of whatever future career he may take up. It is for your father
+      to decide what that career shall be: if he gives the matter no thought,
+      the injury to Gabriel would be serious. But then, again, would it not
+      mortify your father if you showed him that he is neglecting his son&rsquo;s
+      interests? Under these circumstances, could you not yourself consult
+      Gabriel as to his tastes, and help him to choose a career, so that later,
+      if his father should think of making him a public officer, an
+      administrator, a soldier, he might be prepared with some special training?
+      I do not suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish to bring
+      Gabriel up in idleness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; said Marguerite; &ldquo;when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+      took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often said
+      we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel ought to have
+      a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me, what career is
+      best for a man to choose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, &ldquo;Gabriel is at the
+      head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the Ecole
+      Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge which will
+      fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can choose the path in
+      life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus, without compromising his
+      future, you will have saved a great deal of time. Men who leave the Ecole
+      with honors are sought after on all sides; the school turns out statesmen,
+      diplomats, men of science, engineers, generals, sailors, magistrates,
+      manufacturers, and bankers. There is nothing extraordinary in the son of a
+      rich or noble family preparing himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on
+      this course I shall ask you to&mdash;will you grant my request? Say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me be his tutor,&rdquo; he answered, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and said,
+      &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+      accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have thought
+      for us. I thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not to
+      show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will bring both boys to see you,&rdquo; he said, when he was a little calmer;
+      &ldquo;to-morrow is a holiday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when he
+      had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door of the
+      dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+      father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had sat
+      that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said to Balthazar, &ldquo;I have come to-night to talk to
+      you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I keep no account of time,&rdquo; said Balthazar, wiping away the tears that
+      came at the word &ldquo;decease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, monsieur!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, &ldquo;how can you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the limits
+      of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you and your
+      co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he must make an
+      inventory of his property within forty-five days of his wife&rsquo;s decease, so
+      as to render in his accounts at the end of that time. It is necessary to
+      know the value of his property before deciding whether to accept it as
+      sufficient security, or whether we must fall back on the legal rights of
+      minors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not go away, my dear cousin,&rdquo; continued Pierquin; &ldquo;my words concern
+      you&mdash;you and your father both. You know how truly I share your grief,
+      but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If you do not,
+      every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am only doing my
+      duty as the family lawyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is right,&rdquo; said Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time expires in two days,&rdquo; resumed Pierquin; &ldquo;and I must begin the
+      inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the legacy-tax
+      which the public treasurer will come here and demand. Treasurers have no
+      hearts; they don&rsquo;t trouble themselves about feelings; they fasten their
+      claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore for the next two days my clerk and
+      I will be here from ten till four with Monsieur Raparlier, the public
+      appraiser. After we get through the town property we shall go into the
+      country. As for the forest of Waignies, we shall be obliged to hold a
+      consultation about that. Now let us turn to another matter. We must call a
+      family council and appoint a guardian to protect the interests of the
+      minor children. Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your nearest relative; but
+      he has now become a Belgian. You ought,&rdquo; continued Pierquin, addressing
+      Balthazar, &ldquo;to write to him on this matter; you can then find out if he
+      has any intention of settling in France, where he has a fine property.
+      Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to move into French
+      Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making up the council with
+      the other near relatives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the use of an inventory?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts and
+      its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family council, acting
+      on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it sees fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pierquin,&rdquo; said Claes, rising from the bench, &ldquo;do all that is necessary
+      to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the distress of selling
+      the things that belonged to my dear&mdash;&rdquo; he was unable to continue; but
+      he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of such deep feeling that
+      Marguerite took her father&rsquo;s hand and kissed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, then,&rdquo; said Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to breakfast,&rdquo; said Claes; then he seemed to gather his scattered
+      senses together and exclaimed: &ldquo;But in my marriage contract, which was
+      drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from the obligation
+      of making an inventory, in order that she might not be annoyed by it: it
+      is very probable that I was equally released&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what happiness!&rdquo; cried Marguerite. &ldquo;It would have been so distressing
+      to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow,&rdquo; said the
+      notary, rather confused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you did not know of this?&rdquo; said Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused to
+      continue it after the young girl&rsquo;s comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil is in it!&rdquo; he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+      &ldquo;That man&rsquo;s wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,&mdash;just
+      when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against him! I have
+      cracked my brains to save the property of those children. I meant to
+      proceed regularly and come to an understanding with old Conyncks, and
+      here&rsquo;s the end of it! I shall lose ground with Marguerite, for she will
+      certainly ask her father why I wanted an inventory of the property, which
+      she now sees was not necessary; and Claes will tell her that notaries have
+      a passion for writing documents, that we are lawyers above all, above
+      cousins or friends or relatives, and all such stuff as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+      themselves by sensitiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore, was
+      done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the matter of
+      property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+      Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis, worked
+      studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the necessary
+      examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and Felicie
+      lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father&rsquo;s country
+      place as a measure of economy. Monsieur Claes attended to his business
+      affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a considerable sum of money on his
+      property, and went to see the forest at Waignies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him a
+      prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he was
+      leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely
+      against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he forbade
+      himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it. Still, he
+      would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his researches
+      theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled his passion which
+      soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he was really bound not to
+      continue his researches, and remembered that his wife had refused his
+      oath. Though he had pledged his word to himself that he would never pursue
+      the solution of the great Problem, might he not change that determination
+      at a moment when he foresaw success? He was now fifty-nine years old. At
+      that age a predominant idea contracts a certain peevish fixedness which is
+      the first stage of monomania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace which
+      Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries and
+      scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of various
+      countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+      communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+      progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists themselves,
+      towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted to the higher
+      sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat, electricity, galvanism,
+      magnetism were all different effects of the same cause, and that the
+      difference existing between substances hitherto considered simple must be
+      produced by varying proportions of an unknown principle. The fear that
+      some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals and discover the
+      constituent principle of electricity,&mdash;two achievements which would
+      lead to the solution of the chemical Absolute,&mdash;increased what the
+      people of Douai called a mania, and drove his desires to a paroxysm
+      conceivable to those who devote themselves to the sciences, or who have
+      ever known the tyranny of ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion all
+      the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite, who
+      watched every evidence of her father&rsquo;s state of mind, opened the
+      long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+      which her mother&rsquo;s death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+      re-awaking her father&rsquo;s grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+      the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She determined
+      to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its distractions.
+      Several good marriages were proposed to her, which occupied Claes&rsquo;s mind,
+      but to all of them she replied that she should not marry until after she
+      was twenty-five. But in spite of his daughter&rsquo;s efforts, in spite of his
+      remorseful struggles, Balthazar, at the beginning of the winter, returned
+      secretly to his researches. It was difficult, however, to hide his
+      operations from the inquisitive women in the kitchen; and one morning
+      Martha, while dressing Marguerite, said to her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier&mdash;who
+      is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the cross&mdash;has
+      gone back to the garret. There&rsquo;s monsieur on the high-road to hell. Pray
+      God he mayn&rsquo;t kill you as he killed my poor mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not possible!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and see the signs of their traffic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
+      the flue of the laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be twenty-one in a few months,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;and I shall know
+      how to oppose the destruction of our property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect for
+      the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the happiness
+      of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was more elastic,
+      his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in his career of
+      glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man profoundly
+      trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked night and
+      day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know how little a
+      man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+      retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of a
+      miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
+      noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
+      necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
+      left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went to
+      bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters without
+      saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs they wished
+      him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss him on both
+      cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great domestic misfortunes had
+      Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the authority of a mother, and
+      if, moreover, she were not protected by a secret love from the dangers of
+      so much liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+      would soon be complete. Balthazar&rsquo;s rural estates, which yielded sixteen
+      thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
+      now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
+      francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed a
+      considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
+      interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who is the
+      slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to Marguerite
+      for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated that three
+      years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the law would step
+      in and eat up all that Balthazar had not squandered. Marguerite&rsquo;s coldness
+      brought Pierquin to a state of almost hostile indifference. To give
+      himself an appearance in the eyes of the world of having renounced her
+      hand, he frequently remarked of the Claes family in a tone of compassion:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well, it
+      can&rsquo;t be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal means
+      which might have rescued them from poverty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in Douai,
+      thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits which made him
+      worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two young girls, who
+      called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as their father had gone to
+      bed. Emmanuel&rsquo;s gentle rap at the street-door was never missing. For the
+      last three months, encouraged by the gracious, though mute gratitude with
+      which Marguerite now accepted his attentions, he became at his ease, and
+      was seen for what he was. The brightness of his pure spirit shone like a
+      flawless diamond; Marguerite learned to understand its strength and its
+      constancy when she saw how inexhaustible was the source from which it
+      came. She loved to watch the unfolding, one by one, of the blossoms of his
+      heart, whose perfume she had already breathed. Each day Emmanuel realized
+      some one of Marguerite&rsquo;s hopes, and illumined the enchanted regions of
+      love with new lights that chased away the clouds and brought to view the
+      serene heavens, giving color to the fruitful riches hidden away in the
+      shadow of their lives. More at his ease, the young man could display the
+      seductive qualities of his heart until now discreetly hidden, the
+      expansive gaiety of his age, the simplicity which comes of a life of
+      study, the treasures of a delicate mind that life has not adulterated, the
+      innocent joyousness which goes so well with loving youth. His soul and
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s understood each other better; they went together to the
+      depths of their hearts and found in each the same thoughts,&mdash;pearls
+      of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those the legends tell of
+      beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers. They made themselves known
+      to one another by an interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection
+      which bore the signs, in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done
+      without false shame, but not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which
+      Emmanuel spent with the sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to
+      accept the life of anguish and renunciation on which she had entered. This
+      artless, progressive love was her support. In all his testimonies of
+      affection Emmanuel showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet
+      yet subtile mind which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of
+      a diamond relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,&mdash;adorable
+      wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the
+      artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with
+      novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it is
+      an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to a
+      woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her heart and yet not
+      blight it. The more Emmanuel was free to utter himself, the more charming
+      were the expressions of his love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to get here before Pierquin,&rdquo; he said to Marguerite one
+      evening. &ldquo;He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it from
+      me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at Waignies to
+      speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are already felled,
+      and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three hundred
+      thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price, which he has
+      used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off his debts
+      entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand francs of the
+      three hundred thousand still due to him on the purchase-money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin entered at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are ruined. I told you how it would
+      be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an insatiable
+      appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your family guardian,
+      Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam, and Claes has seized
+      the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all wrong. I have written to
+      Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too late; everything will be
+      squandered. You will be obliged to sue your father. The suit can&rsquo;t be
+      long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur Conyncks has no alternative
+      but to institute proceedings; the law requires it. This is the result of
+      your obstinacy. Do you now see my prudence, and how devoted I was to your
+      interests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bring you some good news, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said young de Solis in his
+      gentle voice. &ldquo;Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. The
+      difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+      Gabriel&rsquo;s outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard,&rdquo; she added,
+      kissing her sister&rsquo;s forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days,&rdquo; said Emmanuel;
+      &ldquo;he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing,&rdquo; said the lawyer, eyeing the
+      professor from head to foot; &ldquo;for he will have to make his own way. But,
+      my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of the family:
+      will you listen to what I say this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;not if it relates to marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what will you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&mdash;nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are of age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+      father and to the honor of the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+      does, I will call again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, monsieur,&rdquo; said Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself,&rdquo; thought the notary.
+      &ldquo;Adieu, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said aloud. &ldquo;Monsieur, my respects to you&rdquo;; and
+      he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have consulted
+      an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, in a
+      hesitating voice. &ldquo;If you will allow me, I will go to Amsterdam to-morrow
+      and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear Marguerite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile and a
+      tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He paused,
+      looking at Felicie and Martha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak before my sister,&rdquo; said Marguerite. &ldquo;She is so docile and
+      courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned to
+      our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see for
+      herself how necessary courage is to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew some
+      pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us, Martha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Marguerite,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+      conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of his
+      voice, &ldquo;I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers who
+      still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled timber.
+      To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name of Monsieur
+      Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an injunction upon
+      them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will have returned, the
+      family council can be called together, and Gabriel put in possession of
+      his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and your brother being thus
+      authorized to use those rights, you will demand your share in the proceeds
+      of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot refuse you the two hundred thousand
+      francs on which the injunction will have been put; as to the remaining
+      hundred thousand which is due to you, you must obtain a mortgage on this
+      house. Monsieur Conyncks will demand securities for the three hundred
+      thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean. Under these circumstances your
+      father will be obliged to mortgage his property on the plain of Orchies,
+      which he has already encumbered to the amount of three hundred thousand
+      francs. The law gives a retrospective priority to the claims of minors;
+      and that will save you. Monsieur Claes&rsquo;s hands will be tied for the
+      future; your property becomes inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on
+      his own estates because they will be held as security for other sums.
+      Moreover, the whole can be done quietly, without scandal or legal
+      proceedings. Your father will be forced to greater prudence in making his
+      researches, even if he cannot be persuaded to relinquish them altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marguerite, &ldquo;but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+      living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain a
+      mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live here.
+      The proceeds of my father&rsquo;s property in the country will pay the interest
+      on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but how are we to
+      live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, &ldquo;by investing the fifty thousand
+      francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get, according
+      to present rates, more than four thousand francs&rsquo; income, which will
+      suffice to pay your brother&rsquo;s board and lodging and all his other expenses
+      in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is of age, therefore
+      you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it, and you will have one
+      expense the less. Besides, you will have your own fifty thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father will ask me for them,&rdquo; she said in a frightened tone; &ldquo;and I
+      shall not be able to refuse him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing yourself.
+      Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel&rsquo;s name: it will bring you
+      twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who are emancipated
+      cannot sell property without permission of the family council; you will
+      thus gain three years&rsquo; peace of mind. By that time your father will either
+      have solved his problem or renounced it; and Gabriel, then of age, will
+      reinvest the money in your own name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which she
+      did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see this
+      pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought with him
+      to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of minors; she
+      quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural penetration of
+      women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabriel came home to his father&rsquo;s house on the following day. When
+      Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his admission to
+      the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor with a wave of
+      his hand, and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my brother,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+      laboratory, &ldquo;work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+      practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass your
+      time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits which
+      ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly three
+      thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for your
+      pocket-money; that is surely enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will answer for him,&rdquo; said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on his
+      pupil&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite, had
+      obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely proposed
+      by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to face with
+      the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense of honor allowed
+      no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the timber to which he
+      had consented at a moment when he was harassed by creditors, submitted to
+      all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair the almost involuntary wrong
+      that he had done to his children, he signed the deeds in a preoccupied
+      way. He was now as careless and improvident as a Negro who sells his wife
+      in the morning for a drop of brandy, and cries for her at night. He gave
+      no thought to even the immediate future, and never asked himself what
+      resources he would have when his last ducat was melted up. He pursued his
+      work and continued his purchases, apparently unaware that he was now no
+      more than the titular owner of his house and lands, and that he could not,
+      thanks to the severity of the laws, raise another penny upon a property of
+      which he was now, as it were, the legal guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters paid
+      the costs of Jean&rsquo;s education and met all the expenses of the household
+      out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum placed in the
+      Grand-Livre in Gabriel&rsquo;s name, which he punctually remitted to them.
+      Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in December of that year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+      sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house, and
+      all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and forks
+      that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and these she now
+      ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day Marguerite had
+      kept silence towards her father on the subject of his depredations, but
+      that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to leave her alone with
+      him, and when he seated himself as usual by the corner of the parlor
+      fireplace, she said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything, even
+      your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I am forced
+      to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely enough to live
+      on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night and day to pay for
+      the schooling of little Jean with the price of the lace dress we are now
+      making. My dear father, I implore you to give up your researches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished; I shall
+      have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved undiscoverable.
+      You will have millions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give us meanwhile the bread to eat,&rdquo; replied Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bread? is there no bread here?&rdquo; said Claes, with a frightened air. &ldquo;No
+      bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been cleared
+      and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies, the rents
+      scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have borrowed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what are we living on?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite held up her needle and continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gabriel&rsquo;s income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both ends
+      meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that I
+      do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think I
+      have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for potash,
+      or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+      judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold everything,&mdash;pictures,
+      tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain from making debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to make any more!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any more?&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;then you have some?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mere trifles,&rdquo; he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the lowering
+      of her father&rsquo;s character, and suffered from it so much that she dared not
+      question him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+      exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+      banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+      notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that the
+      house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same amount,
+      falling due in consecutive months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All is over!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;the time has come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+      steps, talking to herself:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred thousand francs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I must find them, or see my
+      father in prison. What am I to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
+      the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
+      brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
+      here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
+      products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
+      pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
+      and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
+      upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure of
+      Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a workman,
+      his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered it. His eyes
+      were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough. The receiver of
+      this instrument was covered with a lens made of double convex glasses, the
+      space between the glasses being filled with alchohol, which focussed the
+      light coming through one of the compartments of the rose-window of the
+      garret. The shelf of the receiver communicated with the wire of an immense
+      galvanic battery. Lemulquinier, busy at the moment in moving the pedestal
+      of the machine, which was placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens
+      in a perpendicular direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his
+      face black with dust, and called out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! mademoiselle, don&rsquo;t come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument, and
+      receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+      protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads of silver,
+      his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the strangeness of the
+      objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts of the vast garret
+      from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring, all contributed to
+      startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, &ldquo;Send away
+      Lemulquinier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
+      has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching for
+      every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a complete
+      vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents. At this very
+      moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is about to show
+      results which I alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in paying
+      your notes of hand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
+      francs by four o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable this
+      month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I could
+      only have a July sun the experiment would be successful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears rolled
+      from his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur is quite right,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier; &ldquo;it is all the fault of that
+      rascally sun which is too feeble,&mdash;the coward, the lazy thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us, Mulquinier,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I see a new experiment!&rdquo; cried Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, lay aside your experiments,&rdquo; said his daughter, when they were
+      alone. &ldquo;You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not a
+      penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will become
+      of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs and the
+      name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow it. I
+      shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful to see
+      you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our position; see
+      reason at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madness!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his luminous
+      eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and repeated the
+      word &ldquo;Madness!&rdquo; so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;your mother would never have uttered that word to me. She
+      was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned a science
+      to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human race; she
+      knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The feelings of a
+      loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial affection. Yes, Love is
+      above all other feelings. See reason!&rdquo; he went on, striking his breast.
+      &ldquo;Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say we are poor; well, my
+      daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your father, obey me. I will make you
+      rich when I please. Your fortune? it is a pittance! When I find the
+      solvent of carbon I will fill your parlor with diamonds, and they are but
+      a scintilla of what I seek. You can well afford to wait while I consume my
+      life in superhuman efforts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you have
+      already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of my
+      mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him, doubtless,
+      as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to him, as she
+      sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving myself wholly
+      to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling you to render an
+      account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past and think of the
+      present. I am here now to represent the necessity which you have created
+      for yourself. You must have money to meet your notes&mdash;do you
+      understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but the portrait of
+      your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of my mother, who felt
+      herself too feeble to defend her children against their father; she
+      ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my brothers and my sister;
+      I come, father, in the name of all the Claes, and I command you to give up
+      your experiments, or earn the means of pursuing them hereafter, if pursue
+      them you must. If you arm yourself with the power of your paternity, which
+      you employ only for our destruction, I have on my side your ancestors and
+      your honor, whose voice is louder than that of chemistry. The Family is
+      greater than Science. I have been too long your daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you choose to be my executioner,&rdquo; he said, in a feeble voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part she
+      had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother&rsquo;s voice saying to
+      her, &ldquo;Do not oppose your father too much; love him well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder,&rdquo; said
+      Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. &ldquo;We were just
+      going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap of July
+      sun, for monsieur,&mdash;ah, what a man! he&rsquo;s almost in the shoes of the
+      good God himself!&mdash;was almost within THAT,&rdquo; he said to Josette,
+      clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, &ldquo;of getting hold of the
+      Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about notes
+      of hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, pay them yourself,&rdquo; said Martha, &ldquo;out of your wages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the butter for my bread?&rdquo; said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the money to buy it?&rdquo; she answered, sharply. &ldquo;Come, old villain,
+      if you make gold in that devil&rsquo;s kitchen of yours, why don&rsquo;t you make
+      butter? &lsquo;Twouldn&rsquo;t be half so difficult, and you could sell it in the
+      market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The young
+      ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to be
+      better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won&rsquo;t spend more than one
+      hundred francs a month for the whole household. There&rsquo;s only one dinner
+      for all. If you want dainties you&rsquo;ve got your furnaces upstairs where you
+      fricassee pearls till there&rsquo;s nothing else talked of in town. Get your
+      roast chickens up there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will go and buy something to eat with his own money,&rdquo; said Martha;
+      &ldquo;all the better,&mdash;it is just so much saved. Isn&rsquo;t he stingy, the old
+      scarecrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Starve him! that&rsquo;s the only way to manage him,&rdquo; said Josette. &ldquo;For a week
+      past he hasn&rsquo;t rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for he is
+      always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the present
+      of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on them, I can
+      tell him that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; exclaimed Martha, &ldquo;I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her wizard
+      of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking a Christian
+      blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he&rsquo;d be burned alive; but people
+      here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the gallery.
+      She reached her room, took out her mother&rsquo;s letter, and read as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  My Child,&mdash;If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,&mdash;if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,&mdash;leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,&mdash;I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Josephine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
+      uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
+      entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her children
+      should present the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; &ldquo;go to
+      Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.&mdash;Noble,
+      discreet heart! he never told me,&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;though all my griefs and
+      cares are his, he never told me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have kept a secret from me,&rdquo; she said, showing him her mother&rsquo;s
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel bent his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, are you in great trouble?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;be my support,&mdash;you, whom my mother calls &lsquo;our
+      good Emmanuel.&rsquo;&rdquo; She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
+      knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first saw
+      you in the gallery,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I scarcely dared to hope the time might
+      come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know my word is
+      sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your mother&rsquo;s
+      wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have saved us,&rdquo; she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to go
+      down to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+      Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
+      found themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must pay those notes at once,&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;If Merkstus holds them
+      all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
+      seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
+      ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
+      asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me. Oh,
+      Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!&rdquo; she said, weeping and
+      resting her forehead against the young man&rsquo;s heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked protection,
+      was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in melancholy and
+      restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full, was forced to
+      overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+      nothing,&mdash;neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live
+      in that garret, where the air is stifling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
+      &lsquo;My kingdom for a horse&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;He is pitiless; and in that you
+      must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
+      fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours nor
+      his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give him my fortune?&rdquo; she said, pressing her lover&rsquo;s hand and looking at
+      him with ardor in her eyes; &ldquo;you advise it, you!&mdash;and Pierquin told a
+      hundred lies to make me keep it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes I long for you
+      without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want you
+      rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+      grandeurs of wealth can separate us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ourselves!&rdquo; he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+      &ldquo;The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head. To reach
+      the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no consciousness of
+      justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he has dissipated&mdash;he,
+      so great, so noble, so upright&mdash;the property of the children he was
+      bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have fallen! My God! what is
+      this thing he seeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+      family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
+      for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless you
+      must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+      children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
+      ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
+      nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor mother is happy,&rdquo; said Marguerite; &ldquo;she would have suffered a
+      thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+      Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is an end,&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;When you have nothing left, Monsieur
+      Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him stop now, then,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;for we are without a penny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes&rsquo;s notes and returned, bringing them
+      to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few moments
+      before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter noticed the
+      signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father, reason and
+      judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard, then into
+      the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his daughter, he
+      came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+      tenderness, &ldquo;forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done wrong.
+      You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable wretch. I
+      will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold,&rdquo; he went on, pointing
+      to the martyr&rsquo;s portrait. &ldquo;He died for Liberty, I die for Science; he is
+      venerated, I am hated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hated? oh, my father, no,&rdquo; she cried, throwing herself on his breast; &ldquo;we
+      all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?&rdquo; she said, turning to her sister who
+      came in at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, dear father?&rdquo; said his youngest daughter, taking his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have ruined you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Felicie, &ldquo;but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+      always at the head of his class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See, father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial way
+      to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock, &ldquo;here
+      are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing left to
+      pay them with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have money?&rdquo; whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
+      from his surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of joy
+      and hope in her father&rsquo;s face as he looked about him to discover the gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have my own fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to me,&rdquo; he said with a rapacious gesture; &ldquo;I will return you a
+      hundred-fold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will give it to you,&rdquo; answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+      Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear daughter!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you save my life. I have thought of a
+      last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I do
+      not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms, my
+      darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You give me
+      glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to heap
+      treasures upon my children&mdash;yes! I will load you with jewels, with
+      wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed his daughter&rsquo;s forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
+      testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
+      obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at her
+      eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his mistress:
+      if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and rose to fulfil
+      it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his attentions, which
+      were painfully out of keeping with his premature old age. To all these
+      cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast of actual distress,
+      shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a glance along the empty
+      shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said, following her eyes, &ldquo;in six months we shall fill
+      them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
+      Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
+      beings&mdash;through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita,&rdquo; he said, smiling,
+      &ldquo;thy name is a prophecy. &lsquo;Margarita&rsquo; means a pearl. Sterne says so
+      somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
+      would amuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;we have
+      suffered enough already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
+      be rich and all-powerful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle has got such a good heart,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier, whose seamed
+      face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all the
+      natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
+      Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic fluid;
+      he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit, which once
+      fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters into his
+      heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first time in many
+      months, the father and the children reunited. The young professor, in
+      spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the scene; for Claes&rsquo;s
+      manners and conversation had recovered their former irresistible
+      seduction!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+      ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+      nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
+      More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
+      are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget all;
+      they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own souls,
+      know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of all this.
+      If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their power to observe
+      and recognize that which goes on around them, they are satisfied with
+      having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them on, and they
+      frequently make false application of the knowledge they have acquired
+      about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their social apathy, or
+      they drop from the world of thought to the world of life; at such times
+      they come with well-stored memories, and are by no means strangers to what
+      is happening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the brain,
+      knew his daughter&rsquo;s whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the history of
+      the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed this
+      delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it. It was
+      the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were unable to
+      resist it. The evening passed delightfully,&mdash;contrasting with the
+      griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When Balthazar
+      retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light and bathing
+      them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some embarrassment
+      of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in gold, the
+      possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them on the
+      work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she was mending;
+      and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the money. When he
+      returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o&rsquo;clock struck; Martha, who sat
+      up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where can we hide it?&rdquo; said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure of
+      playing with the gold ducats,&mdash;a childish amusement which proved
+      disastrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow,&rdquo; said Emmanuel; &ldquo;you
+      can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of looking
+      for them there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table to
+      the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry, and let
+      fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and the coins
+      were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor door; the
+      avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing,&rdquo; he said, looking first at his daughter, whose terror
+      nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had hastily sprung
+      up,&mdash;though his attitude beside the pedestal was sufficiently
+      significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was horrible, the
+      scattering of it prophetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not be mistaken,&rdquo; said Balthazar, sitting down; &ldquo;I heard the
+      sound of gold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were beating
+      so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking of a
+      clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Monsieur de Solis,&rdquo; said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a glance
+      which meant, &ldquo;Come to my rescue and help me to save this money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What gold is this?&rdquo; resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and Emmanuel
+      a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it to
+      me that I may pay our debts honorably,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar caught
+      him by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must not escape my thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle Marguerite,
+      who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,&rdquo; Emmanuel
+      replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an almost
+      imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not allow that,&rdquo; said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of paper
+      from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+      astonished young people. &ldquo;How much is it?&rdquo; His eager passion made him more
+      astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be his.
+      Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us count it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are six thousand ducats,&rdquo; said Emmanuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventy thousand francs,&rdquo; remarked Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+      technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred thousand
+      francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means of paying: you
+      are therefore unable to give me any security. These one hundred and
+      seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who can dispose of
+      them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge that she will sign
+      a deed securing them to me on her share of the now denuded land of the
+      forest of Waignies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+      that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel&rsquo;s purity of soul. Brought up
+      by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the young
+      man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart and life
+      to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, monsieur,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;I thought you had more confidence in a
+      man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown out
+      by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love me, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
+      them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed him to
+      do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand ducats
+      were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, I must have that money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you take it, it will be robbery,&rdquo; she replied coldly. &ldquo;Hear me,
+      father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths a
+      day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to kill your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We avenge our mother,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the spot where Madame Claes
+      died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use those
+      words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great problem&mdash;but
+      no, you cannot comprehend me,&rdquo; he cried in accents of despair. &ldquo;Come, give
+      me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes, I know I caused your
+      mother pain: I have dissipated&mdash;to use the word of fools&mdash;my own
+      fortune and injured yours; I know my children are sacrificed for a thing
+      you call madness; but my angel, my darling, my love, my Marguerite, hear
+      me! If I do not now succeed, I will give myself up to you; I will obey you
+      as you are bound to obey me; I will do your will; you shall take charge of
+      all my property; I will no longer be the guardian of my children; I pledge
+      myself to lay down my authority. I swear by your mother&rsquo;s memory!&rdquo; he
+      cried, shedding tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes, thinking
+      she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me&mdash;give it!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What are
+      sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this will
+      kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
+      labors; I will leave Flanders,&mdash;France even, if you demand it; I will
+      go away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes I
+      have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on his
+      knees, and continued, still weeping:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
+      myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall say
+      I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and incapable.
+      And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands. You may beat
+      me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as the best of
+      daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were my blood, my life&rsquo;s blood, I would give it to you,&rdquo; she cried;
+      &ldquo;but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister? No.
+      Cease, cease!&rdquo; she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her father&rsquo;s
+      caressing hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sixty thousand francs and two months,&rdquo; he said, rising in anger; &ldquo;that is
+      all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth. I curse
+      you!&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;you are no daughter of mine, you are not a woman, you
+      have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!&mdash;Give it to me,
+      let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
+      forever,&rdquo;&mdash;and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous
+      energy towards the gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see us
+      now,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try to live, if you can, with your father&rsquo;s blood upon you,&rdquo; cried
+      Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+      room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
+      might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
+      replied by a negative motion of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, my daughter,&rdquo; he said, gently, &ldquo;may you live happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
+      her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness of
+      physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities of the
+      moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and Space,
+      where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to her that
+      days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up the stairs;
+      then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter his chamber.
+      Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with the piercing
+      keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without light, without
+      noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father with a pistol at
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take all!&rdquo; she cried, springing towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as old
+      men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+      disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with her
+      as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, father, enough,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;remember your promise. If you do not
+      succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mother!&rdquo; she cried, turning towards Madame Claes&rsquo;s chamber, &ldquo;YOU
+      would have given him all&mdash;would you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep in peace,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;you are a good daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me old,
+      father, just as you slowly withered my mother&rsquo;s heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of the
+      glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend the
+      truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I comprehend our ruin,&rdquo; she said, leaving him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to spend
+      the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I yielded,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear life,&rdquo; he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, &ldquo;if you had
+      withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
+      adore you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave the future to me,&rdquo; cried the young man, with a radiant look; &ldquo;we
+      love each other, and all is well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+      Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune, and
+      he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained of the
+      sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and well-being
+      of the household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
+      her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might be, she
+      had come to hope in her father&rsquo;s genius. By an inexplicable phenomenon,
+      many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the flower of
+      Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said to herself, &ldquo;If
+      my father succeeds, we shall be happy.&rdquo; Claes and Lemulquinier alone said:
+      &ldquo;We shall succeed.&rdquo; Unhappily, from day to day the Searcher&rsquo;s face grew
+      sadder. Sometimes, when he came to dinner he dared not look at his
+      daughter; at other times he glanced at her in triumph. Marguerite employed
+      her evenings in making young de Solis explain to her many legal points and
+      difficulties. At last her masculine education was completed; she was
+      evidently preparing herself to execute the plan she had resolved upon if
+      her father were again vanquished in his duel with the Unknown (X).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+      bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound
+      now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife&rsquo;s chamber; he shuddered, no
+      doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his movements
+      betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science. Marguerite
+      brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while before dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not succeeded, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. &ldquo;I will not say one word of
+      reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of your
+      promise; it is surely sacred to you&mdash;you are a Claes. Your children
+      will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now belong to me;
+      you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be gentle, and I
+      will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I am going to leave
+      you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs; for,&rdquo; she said,
+      kissing him on his brow, &ldquo;you are now my child. I take Martha with me;
+      to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor child is only
+      seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you; therefore be generous,
+      do not ask her for money; she has only enough for the barest necessaries
+      of the household. Take courage: renounce your labors and your thoughts for
+      three or four years. The great problem may ripen towards discovery; by
+      that time I shall have gathered the money that is necessary to solve it,&mdash;and
+      you will solve it. Tell me, father, your queen is clement, is she not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then all is not lost?&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not if you keep your word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will obey you, my daughter,&rdquo; answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his great-niece.
+      He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain long enough for
+      Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements. Monsieur Claes
+      received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously sad and
+      humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with blunt
+      frankness while they were breakfasting:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,&mdash;a
+      ruinous passion, but we all have our manias.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear uncle!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of a
+      Claes is there,&rdquo; said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, &ldquo;and here,&rdquo; striking
+      his heart; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think so? I count upon you: and for that reason,
+      having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use in your
+      service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, &ldquo;I will repay you with treasures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,&rdquo;
+       replied Conyncks, sternly. &ldquo;Our ancestor has those words engraved upon his
+      brow,&rdquo; he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+      directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur Conyncks
+      for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a daughter twelve
+      years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune. It was not
+      impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the good people of
+      Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her great-uncle. The
+      rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot haste
+      to the House of Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator. For
+      the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile camps.
+      The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the latter
+      naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took place, as a
+      matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country into two warring
+      nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting, were among the chief
+      reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was accepted in the provinces.
+      Between these social camps, the one ultra-monarchical, the other
+      ultra-liberal, were a number of functionaries of various kinds, admitted,
+      according to their importance, to one or the other of these circles, and
+      who, at the moment of the fall of the legitimate power, were neutral. At
+      the beginning of the struggle between the nobility and the bourgeoisie,
+      the royalist &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the
+      liberal &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; so brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to
+      have cost the lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast
+      cannon, were unable to withstand such practice. The two societies
+      naturally became exclusive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+      aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
+      must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when he
+      felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
+      shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
+      fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
+      think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were all
+      among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper circle
+      by means of some creditable alliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto kept
+      them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the old
+      aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him from
+      sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter of the
+      Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social vanity so
+      eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned to his
+      allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary sacrifices
+      to conclude a marriage which should realize all his ambitions. He kept
+      company with Balthazar and Felicie during Marguerite&rsquo;s absence; but in so
+      doing he discovered, rather late in the day, a formidable competitor in
+      Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the deceased abbe was thought to be
+      considerable, and to the eyes of a man who calculated all the affairs of
+      life in figures, the young heir seemed more powerful through his money
+      than through the seductions of the heart&mdash;as to which Pierquin never
+      made himself uneasy. In his mind the abbe&rsquo;s fortune restored the de Solis
+      name to all its pristine value. Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs
+      which reflected lustre on one another and doubled the illumination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+      whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin&rsquo;s spirit of emulation. He
+      tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
+      expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
+      airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared himself
+      disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let her know
+      that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who received for
+      the first time in her life the compliments of a man, listened to this
+      language, always sweet however deceptive; she took emptiness for depth,
+      and needing an object on which to fix the vague emotions of her heart, she
+      allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind. Envious perhaps, though quite
+      unconsciously, of the loving attentions with which Emmanuel surrounded her
+      sister, she doubtless wished to be, like Marguerite, the object of the
+      thoughts and cares of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him over
+      Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in his
+      attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first intended.
+      Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps in the
+      lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon, little
+      colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind Emmanuel&rsquo;s
+      back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a meaning whose
+      insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes. Relying on his
+      intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the secret of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s journey, and to know if it were really a question of her
+      marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but, notwithstanding his
+      clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither Balthazar nor Felicie could
+      give him any light, for the good reason that they were in the dark
+      themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins of power seemed to have
+      followed its maxims and kept silence as to her projects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it difficult
+      to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in making him play
+      backgammon, the chemist&rsquo;s mind was never present; during most of the time
+      this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid. Shorn of his
+      expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes, a gambler
+      without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the burden of
+      hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of genius,
+      gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle,
+      fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even Pierquin could
+      not enter without respect the presence of that caged lion, whose eyes,
+      full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded from excess of
+      light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the mouth dared not
+      utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered face, whose fires
+      revived at the conception of a new experiment; then, as he looked about
+      the parlor, Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes would fasten on the spot where his wife had
+      died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand across the arid
+      pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense, and his head fell
+      forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the world, and the world
+      fell on his breast and crushed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+      Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man the
+      necessary money to renew his search,&mdash;so contagious are the
+      convictions of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes and
+      Marguerite had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly checked
+      the impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in efforts at
+      consolation which still further embittered the anguish of the doomed
+      Titan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in her
+      departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either to him
+      or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her he seemed
+      annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against him? Was he
+      humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of paternity to his own
+      child? Had he come to love her less because she was now the father, he the
+      child? Perhaps there were many of these reasons, many of these
+      inexpressible feelings which float like vapors through the soul, in the
+      mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite. However great may be the
+      great men of earth, be they known or unknown, fortunate or unfortunate in
+      their endeavors, all have likenesses which belong to human nature. By a
+      double misfortune they suffer through their greatness not less than
+      through their defects; and perhaps Balthazar needed to grow accustomed to
+      the pangs of wounded vanity. The life he was leading, the evenings when
+      these four persons met together in Marguerite&rsquo;s absence, were full of
+      sadness and vague, uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like a
+      parched-up soil; where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few rare
+      consolations, though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the strength
+      of the family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the return
+      of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her uncle who
+      remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no doubt to lend
+      the weight of his authority to some coup d&rsquo;etat planned by his niece.
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s return was made a family fete. Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis
+      were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar. When the
+      travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went to meet it
+      with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see her home once
+      more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the court-yard to
+      reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored like a guilty wife
+      who is unable to dissimulate; but her face recovered its serenity as she
+      looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed to gather strength to complete a
+      work she had secretly undertaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the dinner,
+      father and daughter watched each other with distrust and curiosity.
+      Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in Paris,
+      doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis imitated his
+      reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family secrets, said to
+      Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of liveliness:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen little of Paris,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I did not go there for
+      amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai once
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+      Opera; and even there she was uneasy,&rdquo; said Monsieur Conyncks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+      with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite and
+      Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the rest. As
+      the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew more and
+      more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but her motions,
+      her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen anxiety. Messieurs
+      Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of the secret feelings
+      which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared to encourage her by
+      expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept from a knowledge of the
+      steps that had been taken on his behalf, withdrew little by little from
+      his children and friends, and pointedly kept silence. Marguerite would no
+      doubt soon disclose what she had decided upon for his future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age a
+      man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and more
+      thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he would be
+      forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of those crises
+      in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by imagery. The
+      thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were laughing in the
+      fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was coming, but they held up
+      their heads and continued on their way. Monsieur Conyncks was the first to
+      leave the room, conducted by Balthazar to his chamber. During the latter&rsquo;s
+      absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis went away. Marguerite bade the
+      notary good-night with much affection; she said nothing to Emmanuel, but
+      she pressed his hand and gave him a tearful glance. She sent Felicie away,
+      and when Claes returned to the parlor he found his daughter alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My kind father,&rdquo; she said in a trembling voice, &ldquo;nothing could have made
+      me leave home but the serious position in which we found ourselves; but
+      now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest difficulties, I
+      return with some chances of deliverance for all of us. Thanks to your
+      name, and to my uncle&rsquo;s influence, and to the support of Monsieur de
+      Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under government as
+      receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth, they say, eighteen to
+      twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has given bonds as your security.
+      Here is the nomination,&rdquo; she added, drawing a paper from her bag. &ldquo;Your
+      life in Douai, in this house, during the coming years of privation and
+      sacrifice would be intolerable to you. Our father must be placed in a
+      situation at least equal to that in which he has always lived. I ask
+      nothing from the salary you will receive from this appointment; employ it
+      as you see fit. I will only beg you to remember that we have not a penny
+      of income, and that we must live on what Gabriel can give us out of his.
+      The town shall know nothing of our inner life. If you were still to live
+      in this house you would be an obstacle to the means my sister and I are
+      about to employ to restore comfort and ease to the home. Have I abused the
+      authority you gave me by putting you in a position to remake your own
+      fortune? In a few years, if you so will, you can easily become the
+      receiver-general.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other words, Marguerite,&rdquo; said Balthazar, gently, &ldquo;you turn me out of
+      my own house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not deserve that bitter reproach,&rdquo; replied the daughter, quelling
+      the tumultuous beatings of her heart. &ldquo;You will come back to us in a
+      manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your promise. You
+      are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he might himself
+      accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not go,&rdquo; said Balthazar, rising; &ldquo;I need no help from any one to
+      restore my property and pay what I owe to my children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be better, certainly,&rdquo; replied Marguerite, calmly. &ldquo;But now I
+      ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in a
+      few words. If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so that
+      you may remain its master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite!&rdquo; cried Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; she said, continuing her words without taking notice of
+      her father&rsquo;s anger, &ldquo;it will be necessary to notify the minister of your
+      refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post,
+      which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but for
+      certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children leave me!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave us or we must leave you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If I were your only
+      child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate;
+      but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and
+      despair. I promised it to her who died there,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the
+      place where her mother&rsquo;s bed had stood. &ldquo;We have hidden our troubles from
+      you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone. My father, we are
+      not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it. Courage is not
+      sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be incessantly
+      brought to nought by the caprices of a passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear children,&rdquo; cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite&rsquo;s hand, &ldquo;I will
+      help you, I will work, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is the means,&rdquo; she answered, showing him the official letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose
+      the fruits of ten years&rsquo; work, and the enormous sums of money which my
+      laboratory represents. There,&rdquo; he said, pointing towards the garret, &ldquo;are
+      our real resources.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, you must choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my daughter, you are very hard,&rdquo; he replied, sitting down in an
+      armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+      Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple announcement
+      turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old valet
+      remarked hastily:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at eleven
+      o&rsquo;clock to breakfast. He didn&rsquo;t go to bed all night. At two in the morning
+      he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the window at the
+      laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him; he wept; he is in
+      trouble. Here&rsquo;s the famous month of July when the sun is able to enrich us
+      all, and if you only would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed
+      her father&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+      lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the
+      places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his
+      laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to
+      him,&mdash;just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to
+      whom the public holidays are so much lost time. Here were his hopes; here
+      the heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe
+      the breath of life. This alliance of places and things with men, which is
+      so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of science
+      and students. To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science,
+      to abandon the Problem,&mdash;it was death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+      scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+      memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in which
+      her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the parlor, and
+      quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite studied
+      his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of stormy
+      grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him
+      good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her to
+      his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to get my passport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed
+      the poor girl&rsquo;s heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears, and
+      then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at her
+      ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man who had
+      come to a decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle,&rdquo; he said to Monsieur Conyncks. &ldquo;I
+      have always wished to go there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a place where one can live cheaply,&rdquo; replied the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is our father going away?&rdquo; cried Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave him with me to-day,&rdquo; said Balthazar, putting his son
+      beside him. &ldquo;I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a gloomy
+      day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress both thoughts
+      and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile. All instinctively
+      felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly declaring his ruin by
+      accepting an office and leaving his family, at Balthazar&rsquo;s age. At this
+      crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm; he seemed to accept nobly
+      the punishment of faults which the tyrannous power of genius had forced
+      him to commit. When the evening was over, and father and daughter were
+      again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day had shown himself tender
+      and affectionate as in the first years of his fatherhood, held out his
+      hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness that was mingled with
+      despair,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied with your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are worthy of HIM,&rdquo; said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of Van
+      Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to the
+      laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly cherished,
+      and which in that scene of his toil were living things to him. Master and
+      man looked at each other sadly as they entered the garret they were about
+      to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the various instruments over
+      which his thoughts so long had brooded; each was connected with some
+      experiment or some research. He sadly ordered Lemulquinier to evaporate
+      the gases and the dangerous acids, and to separate all substances which
+      might produce explosions. While taking these precautions, he gave way to
+      bitter regrets, like those uttered by a condemned man before going to the
+      scaffold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of a
+      voltaic pile were dipped, &ldquo;is an experiment whose results ought to be
+      watched. If it succeeds&mdash;dreadful thought!&mdash;my children will
+      have driven from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their
+      feet. In a combination of carbon and sulphur,&rdquo; he went on, speaking to
+      himself, &ldquo;carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+      crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+      decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is that how it would be?&rdquo; said Lemulquinier, contemplating his master
+      with admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now here,&rdquo; continued Balthazar, after a pause, &ldquo;the combination is
+      subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the conditions
+      of crystallization&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization,&rdquo; cried the old
+      valet impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will crystallize,&rdquo;
+       said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of indistinct thoughts
+      which were parts of a complete conception in his own mind; &ldquo;but if the
+      battery works under certain conditions of which I am ignorant&mdash;it
+      must be watched carefully&mdash;it is quite possible that&mdash;Ah! what
+      am I thinking of? It is no longer a question of chemistry, my friend; we
+      are to keep accounts in Bretagne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+      take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur de
+      Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science had
+      imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the carriage
+      with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the threshold. There,
+      as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with a despairing
+      pressure, he whispered in her ear, &ldquo;You are a good girl; I bear you no
+      ill-will&rdquo;; then she darted through the court-yard into the parlor, and
+      flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her mother had died, and
+      prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish the hard task that lay
+      before her. She was already strengthened by an inward voice, sounding in
+      her heart the encouragement of angels and the gratitude of her mother,
+      when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel, and Pierquin came in, after
+      watching the carriage until it disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!&rdquo; said Pierquin.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Save the family,&rdquo; she answered simply. &ldquo;We own nearly thirteen hundred
+      acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into three farms,
+      put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I believe that in a few
+      years, with patience and great economy, each of us,&rdquo; motioning to her
+      sister and brother, &ldquo;will have a farm of over four-hundred acres, which
+      may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly fifteen thousand francs. My
+      brother Gabriel will have this house, and all that now stands in his name
+      on the Grand-Livre, for his portion. We shall then be able to redeem our
+      father&rsquo;s property and return it to him free from all encumbrance, by
+      devoting our incomes, each of us, to paying off his debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite&rsquo;s
+      understanding of business and her cool judgment, &ldquo;you will need at least
+      two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your houses, and
+      purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is where my difficulties begin,&rdquo; she said, looking alternately at
+      Pierquin and de Solis; &ldquo;I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has already
+      spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father&rsquo;s security.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have friends!&rdquo; cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+      demoiselles Claes were &ldquo;four-hundred-thousand-franc girls,&rdquo; after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin, unfortunately
+      for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of his enthusiasm, and
+      he promptly added,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+      flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to find
+      her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at her sister,
+      who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the poor girl had
+      allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin&rsquo;s meaningless gallantries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall only pay me five per cent interest,&rdquo; went on the lawyer, &ldquo;and
+      refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take a
+      mortgage on your property. And don&rsquo;t be uneasy; you shall only have the
+      outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy farmers,
+      and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like a good
+      relation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too much
+      occupied in studying the changes of her sister&rsquo;s face to perceive it.
+      After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused smile, and
+      answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de Solis:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are indeed a good relation,&mdash;I expected nothing less of you; but
+      an interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall
+      wait till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has in
+      the Funds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+      you,&rdquo; said Marguerite to her sister. &ldquo;Jean, my angel, be a good boy; don&rsquo;t
+      tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as many new
+      ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie carried off her brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin,&rdquo; said Marguerite to Pierquin, &ldquo;and you, monsieur,&rdquo; she said to
+      Monsieur de Solis, &ldquo;I know you have been to see my father during my
+      absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+      less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let us
+      understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both with the
+      greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with Josette and
+      Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one, not even an old
+      friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the circumstances in which
+      we are placed, our conduct must be irreproachable. We are vowed to toil
+      and solitude for a long, long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in contemplation of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know what to say. He took
+      leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against himself; for he suddenly
+      perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and that he, Pierquin, had just
+      behaved like a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pierquin, my friend,&rdquo; he said, apostrophizing himself in the street, &ldquo;if
+      a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool I am!
+      I&rsquo;ve got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business, without
+      counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets, which is likely
+      to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is so economical), and
+      I&rsquo;ve had the madness to ask interest from Mademoiselle Claes! I know those
+      two are jeering at me now! I mustn&rsquo;t think of Marguerite any more. No.
+      After all, Felicie is a sweet, gentle little creature, who will suit me
+      much better. Marguerite&rsquo;s character is iron; she would want to rule me&mdash;and&mdash;she
+      would rule me. Come, come, let&rsquo;s be generous; I wish I was not so much of
+      a lawyer: am I never to get that harness off my back? Bless my soul! I&rsquo;ll
+      begin to fall in love with Felicie, and I won&rsquo;t budge from that sentiment.
+      She will have a farm of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner or
+      later, will be worth twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for the
+      soil about Waignies is excellent. Just let my old uncle des Racquets die,
+      poor dear man, and I&rsquo;ll sell my practice and be a man of leisure, with
+      fifty&mdash;thou&mdash;sand&mdash;francs&mdash;a&mdash;year. My wife is a
+      Claes, I&rsquo;m allied to the great families. The deuce! we&rsquo;ll see if those
+      Courtevilles and Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come and
+      dine with a Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of Douai; I&rsquo;ll
+      obtain the cross, and get to be deputy&mdash;in short, everything. Ha, ha!
+      Pierquin, my boy, now keep yourself in hand; no more nonsense, because&mdash;yes,
+      on my word of honor&mdash;Felicie&mdash;Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes&mdash;loves
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to Marguerite,
+      who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They rose with one
+      impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but as they reached
+      the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist his joy, and, in a
+      voice that trembled with emotion, he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have three hundred thousand francs of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then where
+      did you get them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who first
+      said the word &lsquo;ourselves&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Emmanuel!&rdquo; she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held hers;
+      and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself into a low
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for me to thank you,&rdquo; he said, with the voice of love, &ldquo;since you
+      accept all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear beloved one,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;this moment effaces many a grief
+      and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,&rdquo; she
+      continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, &ldquo;I know the way to
+      make it mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to witness.
+      The young man&rsquo;s eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did not notice
+      that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father&rsquo;s
+      indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself,&rdquo; she said, holding out
+      the ring. &ldquo;Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you&mdash;she would have
+      chosen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside her,
+      offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my mother&rsquo;s wedding-ring,&rdquo; he said, kissing it. &ldquo;My Marguerite,
+      am I to have no other pledge than this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, dear love,&rdquo; she said, greatly agitated, &ldquo;are we not doing wrong? We
+      have so long to wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of patience,&mdash;he
+      spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you; I have long
+      mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as I am His.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm. It
+      was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an overflowing
+      spring, poured forth its superabundance in little wavelets. The events
+      which separated these lovers produced a melancholy which only made their
+      happiness the keener, giving it a sense of something sharp, like pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact of
+      love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,&mdash;exchanging
+      a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this discretion cost him,
+      how hungry his soul was for that happiness so long desired, which had just
+      been consecrated by the betrothal of their hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here, little sister,&rdquo; said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+      neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+      generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their words
+      of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their projects. In
+      spite of her sister&rsquo;s joyous tone and lively manner, Felicie experienced a
+      sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite took her hand and felt it
+      tremble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle Felicie,&rdquo; said the elder, with her lips at her sister&rsquo;s ear.
+      &ldquo;I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence, and he has
+      said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them.&rdquo; Felicie blushed.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t defend yourself, my angel,&rdquo; continued Marguerite, &ldquo;it is so natural
+      to love! Perhaps your dear nature will improve his; he is egotistical and
+      self-interested, but for all that he is a good man, and his defects may
+      even add to your happiness. He will love you as the best of his
+      possessions; you will be a part of his business affairs. Forgive me this
+      one word, dear love; you will soon correct the bad habit he has acquired
+      of seeing money in everything, by teaching him the business of the heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; added Marguerite, &ldquo;he has property; and his family belongs to
+      the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don&rsquo;t think I would oppose
+      your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie let fall the words, &ldquo;Dear sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you may confide in me,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;sisters can surely tell
+      each other their secrets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+      delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When Marguerite,
+      expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie&rsquo;s
+      heart, she wound up their talk by saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and&mdash;then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Felicie, laughing, &ldquo;leave me to my own devices; I have a model
+      before my eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saucy child!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
+      accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
+      and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
+      both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the two
+      were, to use his own expression, &ldquo;romantic and sentimental girls,&rdquo;
+       adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
+      Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
+      no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream; and
+      accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took her
+      mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk sentiment,&mdash;that
+      being one of the clauses of the primal contract which, according to social
+      usage, must precede the notarial contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you and I have not always been of one mind as to
+      the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but you do
+      now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great desire to
+      be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a fatal habit
+      which the legal profession forces upon us&mdash;you understand me? My
+      heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I have a
+      certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see that I do not
+      please you. It is my own fault; another has been more successful than I.
+      Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man, that I sincerely love
+      your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a brother; accept my purse,
+      take what you will from it,&mdash;the more you take the better you prove
+      your regard for me. I am wholly at your service&mdash;WITHOUT INTEREST,
+      you understand, neither at twelve nor at one quarter per cent. Let me be
+      thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I ask. Forgive my defects; they
+      come from business habits; my heart is good, and I would fling myself into
+      the Scarpe sooner than not make my wife happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is all satisfactory, cousin,&rdquo; answered Marguerite; &ldquo;but my sister&rsquo;s
+      choice depends upon herself and also on my father&rsquo;s will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, my dear cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer, &ldquo;but you are the mother of
+      the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that you should
+      judge me rightly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+      Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+      Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the note
+      ran as follows: &ldquo;Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor of the
+      city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT of being
+      present, etc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite accepted the lawyer&rsquo;s offer only so far as it related to his
+      professional services, so that she might not in any degree compromise
+      either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister&rsquo;s future, or her father&rsquo;s
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette (who
+      vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and seconded all
+      her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where she began
+      operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin.
+      Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that worthy
+      man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he had no wish
+      to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save Marguerite the
+      trouble of clearing the land and working the ground intended for the
+      farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers, who were anxious to
+      settle themselves in life, and he succeeded, through the prospect he held
+      out to them of the fertility of the land, in making them take leases of
+      the three farms on which the buildings were to be constructed. To gain
+      possession of the farms rent-free for three years the tenants bound
+      themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year the fourth year, twelve
+      thousand the sixth year, and fifteen thousand for the remainder of the
+      term; to drain the land, make the plantations, and purchase the cattle.
+      While the buildings were being put up the farmers were to clear the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four years after Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s departure from his home Marguerite had
+      almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two hundred
+      thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up the farm
+      buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave girl,
+      whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town. Marguerite
+      superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases
+      with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so well
+      how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment. By the fifth
+      year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental of the
+      farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her brother&rsquo;s
+      name, and the proceeds of her father&rsquo;s property, towards paying off the
+      mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation which her
+      father&rsquo;s passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes. This
+      redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.
+      Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred
+      thousand francs of his uncle&rsquo;s bequest, and by joining to it twenty
+      thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her
+      management a large slice of the debts. This life of courage, privation,
+      and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went well,&mdash;everything
+      prospered under the administration and influence of Marguerite Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in the
+      department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his
+      great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he
+      succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her
+      father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole
+      Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired
+      its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand
+      of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left
+      Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired by
+      all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his
+      family and crown their happiness by his presence. Marguerite had often
+      expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had
+      formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day when
+      her father would return as master of his house. In her absence Pierquin
+      and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare a surprise which
+      should make the younger sister a sharer in the restoration of the House of
+      Claes. The two bought a number of fine pictures, which they presented to
+      Felicie to decorate the gallery. Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same
+      thing. Wishing to testify to Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in
+      her noble conduct and in the self-devotion with which she had fulfilled
+      her mother&rsquo;s dying mandate, he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures,
+      among them several of those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be
+      brought to Douai in Marguerite&rsquo;s absence, so that the Claes gallery might
+      once more be complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+      Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her sister
+      or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed; but since
+      her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming symptoms, the
+      gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony with which he lived
+      that he might spend the greater part of his salary in experiments the
+      results of which forever disappointed him. Though he was only sixty-five
+      years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His eyes were sunken in their
+      orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a few hairs remained as a fringe
+      around his skull; he allowed his beard to grow, and cut it off with
+      scissors when its length annoyed him; he was bent like a field-laborer,
+      and the condition of his clothes had reached a degree of wretchedness
+      which his decrepitude now rendered hideous. Thought still animated that
+      noble face, whose features were scarcely discernible under its wrinkles;
+      but the fixity of the eyes, a certain desperation of manner, a restless
+      uneasiness, were all diagnostics of insanity, or rather of many forms of
+      insanity. Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the look of a monomaniac; at
+      other times impatient anger at not seizing a secret which flitted before
+      his eyes like a will o&rsquo; the wisp brought symptoms of madness into his
+      face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter betrayed his irrationality:
+      but during the greater part of the time, he was sunk in a state of
+      complete depression which combined all the phases of insanity in the cold
+      melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and imperceptible these symptoms
+      may have been to the eye of strangers, they were, unfortunately, only too
+      plain to those who had known Balthazar Claes sublime in goodness, noble in
+      heart, stately in person,&mdash;a Claes of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige
+      now remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant toil,
+      had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+      expression of the old valet&rsquo;s face showed a singular mixture of anxiety
+      and admiration for his master which might easily have misled an onlooker.
+      Though he listened to Balthazar&rsquo;s words with respect, and followed his
+      every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of the servant of
+      science very much as a mother takes care of her child, and even seemed to
+      protect him, because in the vulgar details of life, to which Balthazar
+      gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These old men, wrapped in
+      one idea, confident of the reality of their hope, stirred by the same
+      breath, the one representing the shell, the other the soul of their mutual
+      existence, formed a spectacle at once tender and distressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living at
+      an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+      possession of his office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native
+      town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar&rsquo;s mind. His daughter&rsquo;s
+      letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning
+      his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution of
+      the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite&rsquo;s arrival with extreme
+      impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter threw herself into her father&rsquo;s arms and wept for joy. This
+      time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the
+      exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like
+      those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety of
+      the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father and saw
+      the change which had taken place in him since her last visit. Monsieur
+      Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on taking
+      Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence of his native
+      place might restore him to health and reason amid the happiness of a
+      recovered domestic life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the first transports of the heart were over,&mdash;which were far
+      warmer on Balthazar&rsquo;s part than Marguerite had expected,&mdash;he showed a
+      singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+      receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+      asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+      manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+      solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+      wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for a time,
+      and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had dwindled from
+      his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and the isolation of
+      his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and childish in all
+      matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His daughter awed
+      him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy she had
+      displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from him, of the
+      wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that had preyed
+      upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity he had long
+      neglected,&mdash;all these things affected his mind towards her, and
+      increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him beside
+      Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and seemed
+      to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman who rules
+      them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with
+      distress an expression of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault.
+      The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible
+      expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by toil, with the
+      puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance
+      of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that
+      littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her
+      father&rsquo;s sense of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to
+      reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they were alone
+      was to ask him,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you owe anything here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+      more about my affairs than I do myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+      involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does monsieur want?&rdquo; asked Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her heart
+      as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some
+      mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion
+      of his labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+      without you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; began Lemulquinier, &ldquo;owes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+      intercepted; it humiliated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me all that my father owes,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who is
+      a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and lead,
+      and zinc and the reagents&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a
+      spell,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I will give them to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an angel, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad;
+      and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the
+      signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three
+      thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be frank with me, father,&rdquo; she said, letting him seat her on his knee;
+      &ldquo;you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without
+      an element of fear in the midst of the general joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Marguerite,&rdquo; he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a
+      grace that seemed a memory of her youth, &ldquo;you would scold me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly?&rdquo; he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. &ldquo;Can I
+      tell you all? will you pay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I owe&mdash;oh! I dare not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty thousand francs,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is just the sum I have laid by. I am
+      glad to give it to you,&rdquo; she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+      dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the chair
+      where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the Chiffrevilles
+      have written me three threatening letters; they were about to sue me,&mdash;me,
+      who would have made their fortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Marguerite in accents of despair, &ldquo;are you still
+      searching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, still searching,&rdquo; he said, with the smile of a madman, &ldquo;and I shall
+      FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We? who are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he is
+      devoted to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+      Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+      should lower himself in her uncle&rsquo;s eyes. She was frightened at the
+      ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for the
+      solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who saw and
+      knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the liberation
+      of his fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+      gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and her
+      father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy over his
+      master such as common men without education are able to obtain over great
+      minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men, taking advantage
+      of concession after concession, aim at complete dominion with the
+      persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case the master had
+      contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows out of habit, like
+      that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab for the horse that
+      gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of this tyranny, resolving
+      to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke if it were real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite
+      to pay off her father&rsquo;s debts and request the manufacturers of chemical
+      products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any
+      orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of
+      dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This
+      corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which
+      augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the
+      thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his
+      own house, started for Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+      escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the nearest
+      friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily diverted the
+      chemist&rsquo;s mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of his own Flanders
+      acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous company of his
+      family and friends gathering about him his emotion was so keen that the
+      tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids reddened, and he
+      held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming unable to release
+      them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from the
+      carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the
+      court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details with
+      a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew himself
+      erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears came into
+      his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care with which his
+      daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he formerly had sold,&mdash;a
+      visible sign that all the other disasters had been repaired. Breakfast was
+      served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and shelves were covered with
+      curios and silver-ware not less valuable than the treasures that formerly
+      stood there. Though the family meal lasted a long time, it was still too
+      short for the narratives which Balthazar exacted from each of his
+      children. The reaction of his moral being caused by this return to his
+      home wedded him once more to family happiness, and he was again a father.
+      His manners recovered their former dignity. At first the delight of
+      recovering possession kept him from dwelling on the means by which the
+      recovery had been brought about. His joy therefore was full and unalloyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into the
+      parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal papers
+      which the notary&rsquo;s clerk had laid upon a table, by which he was standing
+      as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and Balthazar,
+      astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said Pierquin, &ldquo;is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes
+      renders to his children. It is not very amusing,&rdquo; he added, laughing after
+      the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in speaking of
+      serious matters, &ldquo;but I must really oblige you to listen to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+      Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a reproach,
+      and his brow clouded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk began the reading. Balthazar&rsquo;s amazement increased as little by
+      little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the fortune
+      of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been sixteen
+      hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of the account
+      showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and as
+      well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In
+      consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar
+      was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released from
+      encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were signed,
+      Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys formerly
+      borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood, the
+      life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and looked
+      about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of her sex,
+      had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to see that all
+      the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared. Each member of the
+      family understood the old man&rsquo;s wish when the failing humid eyes sought
+      for the daughter,&mdash;who was seen by all present, with the eyes of the
+      soul, as an angel of strength and light within the house. Gabriel went to
+      find her. Hearing her step, Balthazar ran to clasp her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man caught
+      her and strained her to his breast, &ldquo;I implore you not to lessen your
+      sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying out your wishes,
+      and be the sole author of the good that has been done here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter, folded
+      his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face recovered an
+      expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long years,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went back
+      to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children,&rdquo; he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former days
+      had made him so imposing, &ldquo;we all owe gratitude and thanks to my daughter
+      Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has fulfilled my
+      intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed by my labors,
+      gave the reins of our domestic government into her hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, now!&rdquo; cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, &ldquo;we must read the
+      marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids me to
+      draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur Raparlier is
+      coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+      Claes&rsquo;s return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+      arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company
+      quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality of
+      the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three
+      families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to
+      vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The
+      parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal
+      couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere shawls,
+      necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave as to those
+      who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone on every face, and
+      the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost sight of by the
+      spectators,&mdash;who often busy themselves in estimating it out of
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+      solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated, all
+      present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the parlor
+      on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next to them
+      stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on, Felicie and
+      Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only persons who were
+      seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who, for this occasion,
+      had taken Pierquin&rsquo;s duty. Jean stood behind his father. A score of ladies
+      elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from among the nearest relatives
+      of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the Claes, the mayor of Douai, who was
+      to marry the couples, the twelve witnesses chosen from among the nearest
+      friends of the three families, all, even the curate of Saint-Pierre,
+      remained standing and formed an imposing circle at the end of the parlor
+      next the court-yard. This homage paid by the whole assembly to Paternity,
+      which at such a moment shines with almost regal majesty, gave to the scene
+      a certain antique character. It was the only moment for sixteen long years
+      when Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if all
+      the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived; on
+      receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took up the
+      marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis, which was the
+      first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor opened and
+      Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur! monsieur!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a sign,
+      he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious of a shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dared not tell you, my child,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;but since you have
+      done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+      Lemulquinier lent me all his savings&mdash;the fruit of twenty years&rsquo; 
+      economy&mdash;for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+      finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah! my
+      angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled me in
+      my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,&mdash;without him I should have
+      died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur! monsieur!&rdquo; cried Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Balthazar, turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A diamond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+      valet, who whispered in his ear,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to the laboratory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on the
+      old Fleming which meant, &ldquo;You went before me to the laboratory!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; continued Lemulquinier, &ldquo;I found the diamond in the china capsule
+      which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur&mdash;and
+      see!&rdquo; he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose
+      brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children, my friends,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;forgive my old servant,
+      forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years
+      has produced&mdash;without me&mdash;a discovery I have sought for sixteen
+      years. How? My God, I know not&mdash;yes, I left sulphide of carbon under
+      the influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched
+      from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my
+      laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it not
+      awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that slow,
+      that sudden&mdash;what can I call it?&mdash;crystallization,
+      transformation, in short that miracle, then, then my children would have
+      been richer still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem
+      which I seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that
+      diamond upon my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied
+      affections have made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of
+      Science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+      words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+      being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected the souls
+      of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite, saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is thine, my angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the notary,
+      saying, &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as Talma
+      in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he reseated
+      himself, said in a low voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day I must be a father only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and kissed
+      it respectfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man was ever greater,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to him;
+      &ldquo;no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened to
+      question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been formed;
+      but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident. He looked
+      through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an angry gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which no
+      doubt produces metals, diamonds,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was manifested there for one
+      moment, by one chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That chance was of course some natural effect,&rdquo; whispered a guest
+      belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation of
+      everything. &ldquo;At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has wasted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us forget it,&rdquo; said Balthazar, addressing his friends; &ldquo;I beg you to
+      say no more about it to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite took her father&rsquo;s arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms of
+      the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he entered
+      the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with pictures and
+      garnished with choice flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pictures!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;pictures!&mdash;and some of the old ones!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him; he
+      felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation came
+      before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all your own, father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, guessing the feelings that
+      oppressed his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;how many
+      times have you given life to your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+      heart,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+      thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+      little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+      him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by nearly
+      sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give them to
+      Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be made
+      comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us. Monsieur
+      de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,&mdash;a life without
+      luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you are able to
+      return it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father&rsquo;s
+      providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored and
+      furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently descended
+      to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand staircase, on every
+      step of which were rare plants and flowering shrubs. A silver service of
+      exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel to his father, attracted all
+      eyes to a luxury which was surprising to the inhabitants of a town where
+      such luxury is traditional. The servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of
+      Pierquin, as well as those of the Claes household, were assembled to serve
+      the repast. Seeing himself once more at the head of that table, surrounded
+      by friends and relatives and happy faces beaming with heartfelt joy,
+      Balthazar, behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was overcome by emotions
+      so deep and so imposing that all present kept silence, as men are silent
+      before great sorrows or great joys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear children,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+      home the prodigal father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+      others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+      present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however, and
+      the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character of a
+      family fete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to arrive
+      for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor of the
+      restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy day, and
+      gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which involved
+      Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His eldest son and
+      his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging to Monsieur Conyncks,
+      who was unwilling to separate from his daughter. Madame Pierquin also left
+      her father&rsquo;s house to do the honors of a fine mansion which Pierquin had
+      built, and where he desired to live in all the dignity of rank; for his
+      practise was sold, and his uncle des Racquets had died and left him a
+      large property scraped together by slow economy. Jean went to Paris to
+      finish his education, and Monsieur and Madame de Solis alone remained with
+      their father in the House de Claes. Balthazar made over to them the family
+      home in the rear house, and took up his own abode on the second floor of
+      the front building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father&rsquo;s material comfort,
+      aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from the
+      hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that happiness
+      entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever afforded a better
+      illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless felicity which all
+      women cherish in their dreams. The union of two beings so courageous in
+      the trials of life, who had loved each other through years with so sacred
+      an affection, drew forth the respectful admiration of the whole community.
+      Monsieur de Solis, who had long held an appointment as inspector-general
+      of the University, resigned those functions to enjoy his happiness more
+      freely, and remained at Douai where every one did such homage to his
+      character and attainments that his name was proposed as candidate for the
+      Electoral college whenever he should reach the required age. Marguerite,
+      who had shown herself so strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet
+      and tender woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and yet,
+      though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his ordinary income
+      sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory. Marguerite restored all the
+      old customs of the House of Claes, and gave a family fete every month in
+      honor of her father, at which the Pierquins and the Conyncks were present;
+      and she also received the upper ranks of society one day in the week at a
+      &ldquo;cafe&rdquo; which became celebrated. Though frequently absent-minded, Claes
+      took part in all these assemblages and became, to please his daughter, so
+      willingly a man of the world that the family were able to believe he had
+      renounced his search for the solution of the great problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis to
+      Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself and the
+      inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age, barrenness, and
+      other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the last lineal descendant
+      of the family and heir to the titles and estates of his ancient house.
+      Moreover, by one of those curious chances which seem impossible except in
+      a book, the house of Solis had acquired the territory and titles of the
+      Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite did not wish to separate from her husband,
+      who was to stay in Spain long enough to settle his affairs, and she was,
+      moreover, curious to see the castle of Casa-Real where her mother had
+      passed her childhood, and the city of Granada, the cradle of the de Solis
+      family. She left Douai, consigning the care of the house to Martha,
+      Josette, and Lemulquinier. Balthazar, to whom Marguerite had proposed a
+      journey into Spain, declined to accompany her on the ground of his
+      advanced age; but certain experiments which he had long meditated, and to
+      which he now trusted for the realization of his hopes were the real reason
+      of his refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+      than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until the
+      middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for Italy on
+      their way back to France. There, however, they received a letter from
+      Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months, their father had
+      completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to pay
+      Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries of the household.
+      The old valet had again sacrificed his little property to his master.
+      Balthazar was no longer willing to see any one, and would not even admit
+      his children to the house. Martha and Josette were dead. The coachman, the
+      cook, and the other servants had long been dismissed; the horses and
+      carriages were sold. Though Lemulquinier maintained the utmost secrecy as
+      to his master&rsquo;s proceedings, it was believed that the thousand francs
+      supplied by Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly on experiments. The
+      small amount of provisions which the old valet purchased in the town
+      seemed to show that the two old men contented themselves with the barest
+      necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House of Claes, Gabriel and
+      Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums which their father had again
+      borrowed on it. None of his children had the slightest influence upon the
+      old man, who at seventy years of age displayed extraordinary energy in
+      bending everything to his will, even in matters that were trivial.
+      Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had decided not to pay off his debts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter changed all Marguerite&rsquo;s travelling plans, and she immediately
+      took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her past savings
+      enabled her to pay off Balthazar&rsquo;s debts; but she wished to do more, she
+      wished to obey her mother&rsquo;s last injunction and save him from sinking
+      dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise enough ascendancy over
+      the old man to keep him from completing the work of ruin, at an age when
+      no fruitful toil could be expected from his enfeebled faculties. But she
+      was also anxious to control him without wounding his susceptibilities,&mdash;not
+      wishing to imitate the children of Sophocles, in case her father neared
+      the scientific result for which he had sacrificed so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+      September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+      ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which they
+      found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A shopkeeper
+      left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the noise of the
+      carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight of the return of
+      the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed also by a vague
+      curiosity as to what would happen in that house on Marguerite&rsquo;s return to
+      it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis&rsquo;s valet that old Claes had gone
+      out an hour before, and that Monsieur Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him
+      to walk on the ramparts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,&mdash;glad to escape a
+      scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to admit
+      her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and prepare
+      him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to notify
+      Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor. Horror
+      overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a fire
+      had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum and the
+      portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-room was empty:
+      there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal table, on
+      which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two forks and
+      spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his servant had
+      evidently just eaten. In a moment she had flown through her father&rsquo;s
+      portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same desolation as
+      the parlor and dining-room. The idea of the Alkahest had swept like a
+      conflagration through the building. Her father&rsquo;s bedroom had a bed, one
+      chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter candlestick with a
+      tallow candle burned almost to the socket. The house was so completely
+      stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at the windows. Every
+      object of the smallest value,&mdash;everything, even the kitchen utensils,
+      had been sold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even in
+      moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier&rsquo;s chamber and found
+      it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer she found
+      a pawnbroker&rsquo;s ticket for the old servant&rsquo;s watch which he had pledged
+      some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled with
+      scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her own
+      appartement and ordered the door to be broken open&mdash;her father had
+      respected it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst of
+      his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal feeling
+      and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of tenderness,
+      coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its climax, brought
+      about in Marguerite&rsquo;s soul one of those moral reactions against which the
+      coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the parlor to wait her
+      father&rsquo;s arrival, in a state of anxiety that was cruelly aggravated by
+      doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she about to see him? Ruined,
+      decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts his pride compelled him to
+      undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears flowed unconsciously from her
+      eyes as she looked about the desecrated sanctuary. The images of her whole
+      life, her past efforts, her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother
+      happy and unhappy,&mdash;all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene
+      of desolation, all were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected the
+      catastrophe that was to close her father&rsquo;s life,&mdash;that life at once
+      so grand and yet so miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+      lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+      enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the eyes
+      of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father who had
+      squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
+      philosopher&rsquo;s stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
+      this sceptical century, this century!&mdash;etc. They calumniated his
+      purposes and branded him with the name of &ldquo;alchemist,&rdquo; casting up to him
+      in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are uttered
+      on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others, genius is
+      smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate in which
+      Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and &ldquo;tutti quanti.&rdquo; The people are as
+      backward as kings in understanding the creations of genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+      little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from the
+      bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity among
+      persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,&mdash;two
+      sentiments big with contempt and with the &ldquo;vae victis&rdquo; with which the
+      masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune. Persons
+      often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the rose window
+      of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been consumed in
+      smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they pointed to him with
+      their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a mocking jest or a word
+      of pity would escape the lips of a working-man or some mere child. But
+      Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it was homage; he could
+      deceive him with impunity, for though the old man&rsquo;s eyes retained the
+      sublime clearness which results from the habit of living among great
+      thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+      Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+      common consent &ldquo;the House of Claes,&rdquo; was now called in the suburbs and the
+      country districts &ldquo;the Devil&rsquo;s House.&rdquo; Every outward sign, even the face
+      of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were current about
+      Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to purchase the few
+      provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking out the cheapest he
+      could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,&mdash;just as butchers
+      slip bones into their customers&rsquo; meat,&mdash;and he was fortunate, poor
+      creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not refuse to sell him
+      his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact with an imp of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand old
+      man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes added to
+      this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have seen better
+      days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are ashamed to beg.
+      It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would be insulted in the
+      streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the family any public insult
+      would be, had for some time past sent two or three of his own servants to
+      follow the old man whenever he went out, and keep him in sight at a little
+      distance, for the purpose of protecting him if necessary,&mdash;the
+      revolution of July not having contributed to make the citizens respectful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+      Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the secret
+      guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back from the
+      ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the place
+      Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to school.
+      Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men, whose faces
+      brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys began to talk
+      of them. Generally, children&rsquo;s chatter ends in laughter; on this occasion
+      the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know the cruelty. Seven or
+      eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance, and examined the
+      strange old faces with smothered laughter and remarks which attracted
+      Lemulquinier&rsquo;s attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he was born a Wise Man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My papa says he makes gold,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and was
+      devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and said
+      boldly to Lemulquinier,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my little man,&rdquo; replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on the
+      cheek; &ldquo;we will give you some of you study well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! monsieur, give me some, too,&rdquo; was the general exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the old
+      men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by these
+      sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general shout of
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi, the old harlequin!&rdquo; cried the lads; &ldquo;the old sorcerer! you are
+      sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his cane;
+      they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A workman
+      who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier brandish his
+      cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them, and took their
+      part, crying out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down with the sorcerers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the old
+      men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin&rsquo;s servants,
+      appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
+      however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud. The
+      shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
+      chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
+      that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon of
+      introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body could
+      not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings, and he
+      fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who brought
+      him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and their
+      servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from following
+      the body of the old man to the door of his house, where Felicie and her
+      children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister had sent for,
+      were waiting to receive him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
+      less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing that
+      his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of his
+      impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every care
+      bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening, allowed
+      hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though skilfully
+      treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood; and when by
+      degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially affected,
+      perhaps because the old man&rsquo;s anger had concentrated all his forces upon
+      it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a law,
+      up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses, this
+      event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once more a
+      great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will that a few
+      hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience, his strength
+      of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished to arrest all
+      those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too late,&mdash;the evil
+      was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that the matter might be
+      allowed to drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+      denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+      seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+      more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he tried
+      to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned. At that
+      moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her he
+      colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He was
+      able to press his daughter&rsquo;s hand with his cold fingers, putting into that
+      pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had the power to
+      utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell of the brain
+      which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived. Worn out by
+      fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the gigantic
+      problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his memory, this
+      giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded him with
+      respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images of plenty
+      and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family. His every
+      look&mdash;by which alone he could manifest his feelings&mdash;was
+      unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
+      that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite paid her father&rsquo;s debts, and restored a modern splendor to the
+      House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never left
+      the old man&rsquo;s bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
+      accomplish his slightest wish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+      attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+      children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+      bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+      occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+      family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which the
+      political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
+      listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely critical
+      night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned by the
+      nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took place in
+      the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to watch him,
+      fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward convulsion,
+      whose effects were like those of a last agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+      paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a sound;
+      his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed an untold
+      agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood out in drops
+      upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his bedside and
+      kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death made day by
+      day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual satisfaction
+      at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by the doctor,
+      hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading might not
+      relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently struggling. As
+      he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, &ldquo;DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,&rdquo;&mdash;which
+      startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite concerning a sale made
+      by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. Though
+      Emmanuel read in a low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to omit the
+      passage, Balthazar heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+      frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+      fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
+      illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
+      rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered with
+      a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, &ldquo;EUREKA!&rdquo;&mdash;I have
+      found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and died,
+      uttering an awful moan,&mdash;his convulsed eyes expressing to the last,
+      when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to Science the
+      secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,&mdash;too late!&mdash;by the
+      fleshless fingers of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+      referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Casa-Real, Duc de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+
+     Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Protez and Chiffreville
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Savaron de Savarus
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1453 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1453 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1453)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Alkahest
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: September, 1998  [Etext #1453]
+Posting Date: February 25, 2010
+Last Updated: November 21, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+  DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say--May God grant it!
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those
+of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so
+naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent
+land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest
+of other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic
+preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain ignorant
+and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing the
+generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
+gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
+
+The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so closely
+allied to architecture that the majority of observers can reconstruct
+nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life, from the
+remains of public monuments or the relics of a home. Archaeology is to
+social nature what comparative anatomy is to organized nature. A mosaic
+tells the tale of a society, as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus
+opens up a creative epoch. All things are linked together, and all
+are therefore deducible. Causes suggest effects, effects lead back to
+causes. Science resuscitates even the warts of the past ages.
+
+Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
+provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential facts.
+The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to
+man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been,
+and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is rare indeed that
+the picture of a locality where lives are lived does not recall to
+some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith. The comparison
+between a present which disappoints man’s secret wishes and a future
+which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of sadness or of
+placid content.
+
+Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
+Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
+conclusion to man’s uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
+family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
+comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
+beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
+sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
+Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life
+of feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
+nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
+superficial minds deny the heart’s existence. The crowd prefers
+the abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
+persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
+immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity. Therefore,
+to impress this multitude carried away on the current of existence,
+passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the mark, to
+exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello, Mademoiselle de la
+Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds alone disapprove
+such excess, and respect only the energy represented by a finished
+execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The life of this
+essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions of happiness
+which the masses desire as the lot of the average citizen.
+
+A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies
+no weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan
+“far-niente.” Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
+essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
+creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
+lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
+first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make the
+manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as cold
+as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has brought her
+power to bear, and has modified all things, even the effects of climate.
+If we observe attentively the productions of various parts of the globe,
+we are surprised to find that the prevailing tints from the temperate
+zones are gray or fawn, while the more brilliant colors belong to the
+products of the hotter climates. The manners and customs of a country
+must naturally conform to this law of nature.
+
+Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
+monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
+atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
+the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw
+it into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
+acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries of
+vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In exchange for
+its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that fairy glass-ware in
+which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From Austria it learned the
+ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular saying, takes three steps
+backward to one forward; while its trade with India poured into it the
+grotesque designs of China and the marvels of Japan.
+
+And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of all
+things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general storehouse
+of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco brought into
+one smoky outline the scattered features of its national physiognomy.
+Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of their territory,
+the Flemings became a people homogeneous through their pipes and
+beer.[*]
+
+    [*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+
+After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
+products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country of
+Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for itself
+an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs which
+bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its ideality and
+produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic grace, the swing of
+comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the bold flight of ode and
+epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile in discoveries, and
+trained to scientific discussions which demand time and the midnight
+oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal enjoyment. There men look
+exclusively to the thing that is: their thoughts are so scrupulously
+bent on supplying the wants of this life that they have never risen, in
+any direction, above the level of this present earth. The sole idea
+they have ever conceived of the future is that of a thrifty, prosaic
+statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came from a domestic desire to
+live as they liked, with their elbows on the table, and to take their
+ease under the projecting roofs of their own porches.
+
+The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
+comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
+craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
+compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
+on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
+the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
+houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
+monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and that
+of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient industry,
+are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked to show in
+human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could do no better
+than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster, capable, as was
+proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way, and without the
+incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-town.
+
+Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
+which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
+ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one of
+the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of Flemish
+life.
+
+Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
+and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
+buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of
+a venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
+fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
+left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality, its
+traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland.
+Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and
+the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the
+capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
+
+The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
+the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
+than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
+one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
+production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
+never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
+were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
+of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
+to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
+compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound to
+share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children, and
+property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The syndic’s
+forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who were
+excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though he was,
+in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+
+The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
+execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions in
+the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of martyrs
+gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who punished revolt
+through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre over Douai, the
+Claes preserved their great wealth by allying themselves in marriage
+with the very noble family of Molina, whose elder branch, then poor,
+thus became rich enough to buy the county of Nourho which they had long
+held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
+are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
+represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
+Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
+the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
+over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
+francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
+the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a fortune.
+As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in litigation
+between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family which remained
+in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and assumed the title of
+Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a legal right to it. But
+the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to the haughty arrogance of
+Castile: after the civil rights were instituted, Balthazar Claes cast
+aside the ragged robes of his Spanish nobility for his more illustrious
+descent from the Ghent martyr.
+
+The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families exiled
+under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth century, the
+Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and traditions of
+their ancestors. They married into none but the purest burgher families,
+and required a certain number of aldermen and burgomasters in the
+pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her to the family. They
+sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or in Holland; so that
+the time-honored domestic customs might be perpetuated around their
+hearthstones. This social group became more and more restricted, until,
+at the close of the last century, it mustered only some seven or eight
+families of the parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing robes
+of office and magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with
+the habits of their life.
+
+The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was
+well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of
+the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
+objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,--the House
+of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
+which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
+houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
+their homes.
+
+The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
+which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
+doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
+bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette
+of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark
+upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care
+taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note
+all its details.
+
+The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white stone
+ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the window
+in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross, which
+divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal bar,
+placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes of
+the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding
+at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with
+three rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
+projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of
+a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and diamond-shaped,
+were set in very slender leading, painted red. The walls of the house,
+of brick jointed with white mortar, were braced at regular distances,
+and at the angles of the house, by stone courses.
+
+The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
+while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
+a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver’s shuttle
+threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like
+steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the
+rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws
+of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at
+the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the
+two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through which
+the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient usages.
+
+From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
+cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
+the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
+were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The
+front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened
+color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as
+a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which
+would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our climate and the
+effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our own health.
+
+The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
+the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
+eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
+moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
+the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in
+the red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
+immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave
+the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which would
+have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to
+take lodgings over the way.
+
+When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
+from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
+coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-door
+in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door escaped
+from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn, ponderous
+sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and through the
+depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron. This archway,
+painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily sprinkled with fresh
+sand, led into a large court-yard paved with smooth square stones of
+a greenish color. On the left were the linen-rooms, kitchens, and
+servants’ hall; to the right, the wood-house, coal-house, and offices,
+whose doors, walls, and windows were decorated with designs kept
+exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading its way between four red
+walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy tints and reflections
+which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic appearance to faces, and
+even to trifling details.
+
+A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+Flanders the “back-quarter,” stood at the farther end of the court-yard,
+and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
+ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-yard,
+and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as the
+house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led at
+one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and
+were in line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor
+entering the latter could see through to the greenery which draped the
+lower end of the garden. The front building, which was reserved for
+receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art and
+accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in the eyes of a Claes,
+nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures contained in
+the parlor, where for over two centuries the family life had glided on.
+
+The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
+days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
+say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
+the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,--this
+Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges.
+The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich craftsman.
+Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van Huysum, grown
+rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-decoration in
+ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van Artevelde,--that
+brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This
+wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained
+about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van
+Huysum’s masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers
+whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his native town,
+proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give
+him Van Huysum’s great work; but the weaver had already despatched it to
+Douai.
+
+The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
+Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr’s memory, came to Douai to
+frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore
+the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell for
+nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes
+the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court
+of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as
+their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very
+high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last century;
+on it now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five twisted
+branches, in bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows were
+draped by wide curtains of red damask with a flowered black design,
+lined with white silk; the furniture, covered with the same material,
+had been renovated in the time of Louis XIV. The floor, evidently
+modern, was laid in large squares of white wood bordered with strips
+of oak. The ceiling, formed of many oval panels, in each of which Van
+Huysum had carved a grotesque mask, had been respected and allowed to
+keep the brown tones of the native Dutch oak.
+
+In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
+stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
+symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
+stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
+with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
+silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and sombre.
+The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none. Although
+on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the sunshine danced
+upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard admitted
+so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli scarcely
+glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be gorgeous
+on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled with soft
+shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the sun on the
+tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+
+It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes, in
+other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
+it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+looking out upon the garden. The sun’s rays fell obliquely upon the
+house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
+carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo
+projected through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an
+ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment,
+would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full
+of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the
+feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses
+consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed
+in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as
+sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which
+pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
+
+The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
+and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A
+dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
+as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
+folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
+light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show
+in preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
+impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
+expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
+that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most thoughtless
+mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive grief that is
+rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left on this woman’s
+face like lava congealed about a crater. She might have been a
+dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal depths of
+wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human protector.
+
+The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
+nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
+the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
+heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
+prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
+sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
+altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
+small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
+though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
+dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of
+the soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in
+this strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and
+so sharply curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior
+malformation; yet there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it,
+and the partition between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light
+shone through it. Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed
+the pride of noble birth, their expression was one of kindliness and
+natural courtesy.
+
+The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
+questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
+and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world
+obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were
+men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its
+tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was
+seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+
+She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
+days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
+emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
+her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
+nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
+time powerless over destiny.
+
+When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
+the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
+to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
+God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
+the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
+hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
+moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to
+serve the dinner.
+
+At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
+and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her
+tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of
+pain that was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the
+state of happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from
+care. Whether it were that the habit of living in this house to which
+infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects
+that are imperceptible to the senses of others, but which persons under
+the influence of excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether
+Nature, in compensation for her physical defects, had given her more
+delicate sensations than better organized beings,--it is certain that
+this woman had heard the steps of a man in a gallery built above the
+kitchens and the servants’ hall, by which the front house communicated
+with the “back-quarter.” The steps grew more distinct. Soon, without
+possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet
+her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man
+upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor.
+
+The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
+thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong
+step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, “Fire!” his
+feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary
+gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the
+dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting
+spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have
+felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed
+devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two
+iron weights were striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once
+either the heavy, undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of
+a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
+
+When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
+upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
+still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
+servants’ hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed
+in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading from the
+parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the
+sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the
+armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by
+the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna.
+She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into the depths
+of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the wall which
+she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now pushed in with
+such brusque violence that the poor woman herself seemed jarred by the
+shock.
+
+Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
+look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
+erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
+right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself,
+although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile,
+contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line
+which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply;
+her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at
+Balthazar.
+
+It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family
+of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who
+had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood
+there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he
+was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable
+likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because his labors,
+whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column
+was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square
+shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though
+nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once
+perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous
+figure by some possible singularities of the man’s life.
+
+His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
+Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
+which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes
+had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult
+causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and
+the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary
+tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent,
+which made the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken;
+his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a
+short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was
+long rather than oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every
+human face a likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in
+that of Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse’s
+head. The skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire
+were incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space,
+as if to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though
+the flames that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+
+The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
+face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of
+an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose
+fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the
+inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed
+to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible
+reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous
+fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this man;
+it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his mind
+expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with the
+anomalous peculiarities of his person.
+
+His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
+had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned
+and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the
+master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth
+trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his
+cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,--completing an array
+of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened
+a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the
+negligence of genius.
+
+Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
+the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
+and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
+than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices
+than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits
+accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the
+social world fears to square accounts with the man of learning in his
+lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his
+misfortunes or his poverty.
+
+If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
+Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
+companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
+fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
+ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
+things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
+to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
+have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
+man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: “He
+must have been very handsome in his youth.” A vulgar error! Never was
+Balthazar Claes’s appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater,
+had he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience,
+of Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,--where all was broad and noble,
+and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
+
+The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word
+was sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
+complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
+service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
+elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household,
+to manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
+living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
+with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
+the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
+enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+
+At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
+he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
+was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
+of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
+simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
+forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the
+eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul,
+but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which
+gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the
+most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste
+had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly
+pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably,
+and without producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects
+of her conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders
+only, one of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
+
+She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
+garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
+said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman’s
+submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
+the pride of her Spanish nature:--
+
+“Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
+you have been to mass or vespers.”
+
+Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands,
+and waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
+indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those
+beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their
+youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to
+wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical
+disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices
+to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel because it
+contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our nature leads us
+to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in
+the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
+
+Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
+said,--
+
+“Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers.”
+
+He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
+magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
+short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
+
+“Why should they not combine within a given time?”
+
+“Is he going mad?” thought the wife, much terrified.
+
+To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
+by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance
+back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the
+Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
+came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
+manners in the society of Madame d’Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince
+of Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
+originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth
+won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the
+tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends
+ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment when that
+world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more
+attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of life. He
+frequented the society of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who
+at that time was better known to the world for his enormous fortune as
+a “fermier-general” than for his discoveries in chemistry,--though later
+the great chemist was to eclipse the man of wealth.
+
+Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated,
+and became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
+Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
+and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
+that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
+those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
+finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
+society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+
+The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
+his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender,
+which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted
+to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian
+salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and
+the little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man
+must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--Paris, the city of
+cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
+Science, Art, or Power.
+
+The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine’s pigeon to
+its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
+Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
+of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
+had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar’s father and mother had
+left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time
+in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he
+needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened
+upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in
+Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he
+met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as
+to marriage; from his youth he had been accused of never following the
+beaten track.
+
+One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
+then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
+discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
+destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she
+was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar’s old cousin, at whose
+house the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or
+not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying
+man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents’
+property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name;
+thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future
+to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de
+Temninck would marry late in life and without property when, young and
+wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
+
+A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle
+de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
+Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
+listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
+who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
+handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
+consented to allow him to woo her.
+
+It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
+submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
+feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
+and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
+cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--emotions,
+terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore,
+to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
+keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
+lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
+exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear
+that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the
+hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic
+propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the
+promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an intonation;
+trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden desires to speak
+and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the secret eloquence
+of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the mysterious workings
+of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine discernment which
+lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a flavor to silent
+devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love, and the weaknesses
+of its power.
+
+Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
+The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as
+the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused
+her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide
+in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women
+delight in making known by their manners,--wearing it proudly, like a
+coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared
+to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and
+answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves,
+would they not be in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful
+woman can be her natural self,--the world overlooks her little follies
+or her clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the
+noblest expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace
+of her gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole
+bearing. She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no
+faults; she is denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do
+so is never given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at
+every moment, must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise?
+Such a woman can exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance.
+Where are the hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of
+bitter and stinging pity.
+
+These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
+and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by
+the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
+apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense of
+embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
+and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving
+and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone.
+Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
+enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the
+love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to
+wear the draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her
+Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her
+beautiful as before.
+
+Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
+herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
+domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
+had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied
+with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless
+value to the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and
+the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes
+she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness
+of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung
+from Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
+embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what
+he loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each
+day of life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married
+life the handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest.
+After gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending
+to reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
+ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
+delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
+Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
+
+The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
+woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
+being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling
+and sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
+fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not
+believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however short
+its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
+
+Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
+unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
+with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
+in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
+increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
+the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
+fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
+into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
+character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
+harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
+some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering.
+One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly,
+but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and
+uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections
+as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the
+daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man of social life is
+essentially incomplete, without being signally to blame. Men of talent
+are as variable as barometers; genius alone is intrinsically good.
+
+For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
+the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone
+are capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
+equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
+asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
+in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he
+is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle
+and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is
+vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to
+take dull men as the small change for great ones.
+
+Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
+delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like
+all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to
+develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
+happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
+grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
+century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the
+risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart
+the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother’s
+milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied
+her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be that of
+a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was never
+exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity. He
+treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied
+against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty
+woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender;
+he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that
+crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a
+wife.
+
+Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
+and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
+was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was
+equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of
+his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
+wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+
+Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
+intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite,
+but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the
+genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind
+fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death.
+Balthazar’s own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his
+wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she
+received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon
+the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her
+personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an
+ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied the life of each
+heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one another excluded the
+paltry things of existence, while it magnified the smallest accessories.
+
+The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
+he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--are
+they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
+go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To
+forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of
+a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the deification of
+her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written: “Blessed are the
+imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love.” If this be so, surely
+beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in
+the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as
+another is married for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a
+woman disinherited of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam,
+is true love, the mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a
+sentiment for which the day of disenchantment never comes. That woman
+has charms unknown to the world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws
+herself: she is beautiful with a meaning; her glory lies in making her
+imperfections forgotten, and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+
+The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women
+in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra, Jeanne
+de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
+Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
+famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
+number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
+of love.
+
+This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
+more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
+limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
+not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based?
+An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to
+herself the inconstancy of her master.
+
+By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
+up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
+convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
+the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
+dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
+dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to
+have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good
+result; it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of
+mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world,
+she became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first
+years of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least
+the knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society:
+but he was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the
+heart. Josephine never forgot anything that Claes told her relating
+to themselves; she remembered the most trifling circumstances of their
+happy life; but of her evening studies nothing remained to her on the
+morrow.
+
+This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
+but Madame Claes’s understanding of the passion of love was so simple
+and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and
+the thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she
+managed always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that
+her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another
+so well that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion,
+phenomena arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the
+conditions of life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not
+laughter, joy, and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when
+its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion,
+without considering either the means or the end.
+
+No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
+Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
+Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she
+knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth
+and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so
+near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of
+her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear
+which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish
+bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally
+happy,--preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness,
+possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort,
+supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything
+within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.
+
+The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
+born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal
+to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially
+during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those
+nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy
+of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the
+moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet
+house begins, were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children
+to her husband.
+
+In 1805, Madame Claes’s brother died without children. The Spanish law
+does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
+seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes
+was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it,
+Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that
+of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so
+nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage
+which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance,
+seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to which this
+sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to
+determine.
+
+The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
+objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
+worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
+periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation
+followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity
+of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became
+hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery
+leading from the family building to the reception-rooms on the first
+floor of the front house, as well as some fifty others placed about the
+salons, were the product of the patient researches of three centuries.
+Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg,
+Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt,
+Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a
+minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
+
+Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
+Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact,
+each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which belongs in
+a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a
+last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest
+known collection of tulips.
+
+Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
+and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was
+simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
+of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a
+country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
+basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
+old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
+ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the
+richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved
+the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of
+property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with
+limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.
+Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife’s
+property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his
+own. The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living,
+and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the
+country, but which in ten years’ time, if well-preserved, would return
+an enormous value.
+
+The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
+that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
+which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when
+she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.
+She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.
+Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where,
+indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the
+education of her children tended to keep her.
+
+Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
+household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
+conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
+secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar
+Claes’s passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate,
+seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and
+fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the
+cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always had a leaning), and
+dispensed him from the duty of following a mania like his ancestors.
+
+At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
+first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
+night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt
+it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
+submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar’s confidence;
+which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she
+had never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of
+obtaining an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still
+retained enough of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a
+refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had its phases, and
+only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at which it destroyed
+the happiness of the family.
+
+However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
+months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
+character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
+Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
+the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he
+would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led
+by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them
+known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely
+domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar
+became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would
+surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain
+that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than
+happy during several months.
+
+She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
+him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows
+no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment
+without suffering. She waited for the return of her husband’s affection,
+saying daily to herself, “To-morrow it may come,”--treating her
+happiness as though it were an absent friend.
+
+During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
+Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of
+her husband’s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an
+abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman’s pride, hurt for
+the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which
+separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar’s
+condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his
+domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor
+carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the
+light of his Pepita’s dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy,
+seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.
+
+The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
+ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to
+her that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
+seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair,
+then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of
+melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling
+herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating
+consideration for her in this secret occupation by which he secured
+to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his
+independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which make the
+happiness of many a marriage.
+
+Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
+to read her husband’s heart, and found it closed. Little by little,
+she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he
+neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could
+be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that was not of the
+heart, but which, to a woman’s mind, is not less withering. His love
+was dormant, not lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune
+remained the same.
+
+The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one
+word,--hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened
+that whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
+courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
+happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the
+clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to
+return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven brightened, she
+was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him with importunate
+questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly
+escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the gulf of meditation from
+which no word of hers could drag him.
+
+Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
+its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
+woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
+him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
+and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
+changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime
+through love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure
+remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and
+seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When
+the children had gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed
+her, Pepita would say, “My friend, are you ill?” and Balthazar would
+make no answer; or if he answered, he would come to himself with a
+quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and utter a “No” so
+harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the palpitating heart of
+his wife.
+
+Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
+Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world
+of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
+Balthazar’s aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons
+were aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
+Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
+expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
+compelled to defend her husband’s peculiarities.
+
+“Monsieur Claes,” she said, “has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
+him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
+family but to that of his country.”
+
+This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
+town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
+places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
+reaction in favor of Balthazar.
+
+The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
+of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
+remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
+household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day.
+But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the humiliating
+medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance,
+that her husband constantly imported instruments of physical science,
+valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the
+highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. She ought, so her
+kind friends added, to think of her children, and her own future; it was
+criminal not to use her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal
+path on which he had entered.
+
+Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
+these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her
+apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
+system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little
+scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at
+such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change,
+the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and
+replied:--
+
+“My dear, you could not understand it.”
+
+Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
+complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
+whose life she shared.
+
+“Very well, since it interests you so much,” said Balthazar, taking his
+wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, “I will tell you that
+I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
+earth.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry,
+the aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself
+in the way, or that Madame Claes’s secret anxieties made her less
+agreeable than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but
+her intimate friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his
+laboratory all day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only appeared
+in the bosom of his family at dinner-time.
+
+After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his
+country-house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes
+he went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving
+Madame Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing
+a fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
+other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to send
+into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and suffer
+till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which the gates
+closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful of the
+tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the happiness of
+getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of feeling to his
+wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept silence and dared not
+question him, for when she did so on the occasion of his first absence,
+he answered with an air of surprise:--
+
+“Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?”
+
+Passions never deceive. Madame Claes’s anxieties corroborated the rumors
+she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her youth had
+taught her to understand the polite pity of the world. Resolved not to
+undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more into the privacy of
+her own house, now deserted by society and even by her nearest friends.
+
+Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+Balthazar’s dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the
+least bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish
+life. At first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar’s valet,
+Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing, but
+even that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when Balthazar,
+unaware of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of those that
+were stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+
+The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years, during
+which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was apparently and
+suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately reigned. Spanish
+by race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within her when she
+discovered her rival in a Science that allured her husband from her:
+torments of jealousy preyed upon her heart and renewed her love.
+What could she do against Science? Should she combat that tyrannous,
+unyielding, growing power? Could she kill an invisible rival? Could
+a woman, limited by nature, contend with an Idea whose delights are
+infinite, whose attractions are ever new? How make head against the
+fascination of ideas that spring the fresher and the lovelier out of
+difficulty, and entice a man so far from this world that he forgets even
+his dearest loves?
+
+At last one day, in spite of Balthazar’s strict orders, Madame Claes
+resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his life
+was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
+her husband’s labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
+mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory
+of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier
+alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent
+his witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the
+outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of
+the way. For a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with
+angry impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her--all that
+her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
+servant was preferred to a wife!
+
+The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
+the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar’s anger. She had
+hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
+roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
+bottom.
+
+“God be praised! you are still alive!” he cried, raising her.
+
+A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
+husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+
+“My dear, I forbade you to come here,” he said, sitting down on the
+stairs, as though prostrated. “The saints have saved your life! By what
+chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
+just escaped death.”
+
+“Then I might have been happy!” she exclaimed.
+
+“My experiment has failed,” continued Balthazar. “You alone could I
+forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs.”
+
+Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+
+“Decompose nitrogen!” said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
+and burst into tears.
+
+The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have
+a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is
+for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves.
+More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when
+the language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from
+letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain
+as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in
+love than men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but
+his mind.
+
+To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed
+her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival
+might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who
+loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification
+like this only proved Madame Claes’s powerlessness and humiliated the
+feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she had reached a
+point where her ignorance parted her from her husband. Worse than all,
+last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he was often in
+danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know,
+his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral prison from which
+there was no issue, in which there was no hope. Madame Claes resolved
+to know at least the outward attractions of this fatal science, and
+she began secretly to study chemistry in the books. From this time the
+family became, as it were, cloistered.
+
+Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
+the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
+we find it at the moment when this history begins.
+
+The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate
+women, Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the transaction,
+the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame
+Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband’s notary and,
+disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him
+guess them, and even ask her the humiliating question,--
+
+“How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?”
+
+Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
+grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the
+same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the latter,
+though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins. Monsieur
+Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded
+to his father’s practice, was the only person who now had access to the
+House of Claes.
+
+Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude
+that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the
+disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well
+known throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that her
+husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him
+with chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and
+credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies
+without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became
+due. Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the
+chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
+
+Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers
+of chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which
+amounted to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and Pierquin
+studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though
+some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were
+unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of precious
+metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities. The large
+sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of the articles,
+by the precautions needed in transporting some of them, more especially
+valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals,
+and finally by the cost of instruments made to order after the designs
+of Monsieur Claes himself.
+
+The notary had made inquiries, in his client’s interest, as to Messieurs
+Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was
+sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur
+Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results
+obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.
+Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases
+from the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the
+whole thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to
+the very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the
+sum borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which
+Monsieur Claes was held. He then revealed the full extent of the evil,
+telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her
+husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the
+patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value.
+As for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his
+cousin, with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had
+been wholly unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was
+working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+
+Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two
+years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now added
+a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying. Women
+have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do they fear
+so much more than they hope in matters that concern the interests of
+this life? Why is their faith given only to religious ideas of a future
+existence? Why do they so ably foresee the catastrophes of fortune and
+the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment which unites them to the
+men they love gives them a sense by which they weigh force, measure
+faculties, understand tastes, passions, vices, virtues. The perpetual
+study of these causes in the midst of which they live gives them, no
+doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing effects in all possible relations
+of earthly life. What they see of the present enables them to judge
+of the future with an intuitive ability explained by the perfection
+of their nervous system, which allows them to seize the lightest
+indications of thought and feeling. Their whole being vibrates in
+communion with great moral convulsions. Either they feel, or they see.
+
+Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame
+Claes foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the
+deliberate ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of
+Balthazar; if it were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he
+was capable of throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute
+indifference. But what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal
+feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman
+that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come
+between them. Suddenly she found herself at times more mother than wife,
+though hitherto she had been more wife than mother. However ready she
+had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her children to the man who
+had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to whom she was still the
+only woman in the world, the remorse she felt for the weakness of her
+maternal love threw her into terrible alternations of feeling. As a
+wife, she suffered in heart; as a mother, through her children; as a
+Christian, for all.
+
+She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be
+guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach him
+for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness he
+had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his purposes?
+And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the law, told
+her that parents were the depositaries and guardians of property, and
+possessed no right to alienate the material welfare of the children. To
+escape replying to such stern questions she preferred to shut her eyes,
+like one who refuses to see the abyss into whose depths he knows he is
+about to fall.
+
+For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed
+the family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
+governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
+the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
+families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
+feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
+made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his stable
+and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his present
+occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of his
+establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes suppressed
+the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her present isolation
+from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so without pretending
+to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So far, facts had
+contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future was more
+becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living called for no
+explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one who lives up to
+his income is considered a madman.
+
+And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and to
+place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the Molinas,
+the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days before the
+one on which this story opens, the money derived from the sale of the
+diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three o’clock in the
+afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to vespers, she met
+Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who turned and accompanied
+her to the church, talking in a low voice of her situation.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said, “unless I fail in the friendship which binds
+me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position,
+nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can
+hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from
+the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he
+has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance
+of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
+thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
+them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
+retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become
+of you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
+dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the
+house, and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, ‘The devil!’ It
+was the first sign of reason I have known him show for three years.”
+
+Madame Claes pressed the notary’s arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
+“Keep it secret.”
+
+Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
+pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between
+her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her
+mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The
+Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her
+soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was
+accomplished! Between them and their father’s honor she must no longer
+hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her husband terrified
+her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of
+his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must
+now depart from the submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The
+interests of her children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished
+tastes, the man she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to
+common matters from the higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from
+a smiling future and plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists
+and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big
+with glory; he could only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty
+hope. Then too, was he not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk
+with such good sense on every subject that he must be sincere when he
+declared he worked for the glory and prosperity of his family. His love
+for his wife and family was not only vast, it was infinite. That feeling
+could not be extinct; it was magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+
+Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into the
+ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show him the
+sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when he was
+listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his love for her
+would lessen! If she had had no children, she would bravely and joyously
+have welcomed the new destiny her husband was making for her. Women who
+are brought up in opulence are quick to feel the emptiness of material
+enjoyments; and when their hearts, more wearied than withered, have once
+learned the happiness of a constant interchange of real feelings, they
+feel no shrinking from reduced outward circumstances, provided they
+are still acceptable to the man who has loved them. Their wishes, their
+pleasures, are subordinated to the caprices of that other life outside
+of their own; to them the only dreadful future is to lose him.
+
+At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her true
+life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And thus,
+when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the deep
+armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her children,
+directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a message to her
+husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished to see him.
+But although the old valet did his best to make his master leave the
+laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus gained time
+for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to the hour nor
+the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs that could not be
+paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that of the present
+and the future. This influx of painful interests, ideas, and feelings
+overcame her, and she wept.
+
+As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
+of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more distracted
+than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she was magnetized
+for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied of all expression,
+by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled from that bald brow.
+Under the shock of this impression she wished to die. But when she heard
+the callous voice, uttering a scientific wish at the moment when her
+heart was breaking, her courage came back to her; she resolved to
+struggle with that awful power which had torn a lover from her arms, a
+father from her children, a fortune from their home, happiness from all.
+And yet she could not repress a trepidation which made her quiver; in
+all her life no such solemn scene as this had taken place. This dreadful
+moment--did it not virtually contain her future, and gather within it
+all the past?
+
+Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies
+the smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily before
+the masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the rush of
+thoughts that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the feelings
+under the weight of which her heart was crushed as her husband slowly
+crossed the room towards the garden-door. Most women know that agony of
+inward deliberation in which Madame Claes was writhing. Even one whose
+heart has been tried by nothing worse than the declaration to a husband
+of some extravagance, or a debt to a dress-maker, will understand how
+its pulses swell and quicken when the matter is one of life itself.
+
+A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband’s
+feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief; but to Madame
+Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears. When she
+saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards
+him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should stand before him!
+would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the
+glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved to avoid all dangerous
+chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a clear
+voice,
+
+“Balthazar.”
+
+He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his
+wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at
+intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium,
+and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never
+forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine,
+unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which
+her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable
+pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside
+herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed
+her wounded feelings,--
+
+“Monsieur, I am speaking to you!”
+
+“What does that mean?” answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting
+a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like
+a thunderbolt.
+
+“Forgive me, my friend,” she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and
+put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back. “I
+am dying!” she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+
+At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid
+reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this
+attack. Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door
+upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden
+staircase that his wife’s dress having caught on the jaws of one of the
+griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off
+with a loud noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their
+chambers, but the door of Josephine’s bedroom was locked.
+
+He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, “My God! the key,
+where is the key?”
+
+“Thank you, dear friend,” said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. “This
+is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+heart.”
+
+“Good God!” cried Claes, “the key!--here come the servants.”
+
+Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and
+left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving
+them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+
+“What is it, my dear life?” he said, sitting down beside her, and taking
+her hand and kissing it.
+
+“Nothing--now,” she answered. “I suffer no longer. Only, I would I had
+the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet.”
+
+“Why gold?” he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+kissed her once more upon the forehead. “Do you not give me the greatest
+of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious
+wife?”
+
+“Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I
+see that you are still the same.”
+
+“What anguish do you speak of, dear?”
+
+“My friend, we are ruined.”
+
+“Ruined!” he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding
+it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard:
+“To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless. Yesterday,
+in searching for a far more important secret, I think I found the means
+of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear
+wife! in a few days’ time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness--I
+am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be
+indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are
+full of you--of us.”
+
+“Enough, enough!” she said, “let us talk of it all to-night, dear
+friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much
+joy.”
+
+“To-night,” he resumed; “yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave
+my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of
+the heart--Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!”
+
+“You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?”
+
+“Poor child, you cannot understand it.”
+
+“You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read
+Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
+Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,--in fact, all the books
+about the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall
+understand you.”
+
+“Oh! you are indeed an angel,” cried Balthazar, falling at her feet,
+and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. “Yes, we will
+understand each other in all things.”
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “I would throw myself into those hellish fires which
+heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you
+thus.” Then, hearing her daughter’s step in the anteroom, she sprang
+quickly forward. “What is it, Marguerite?” she said to her eldest
+daughter.
+
+“My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to dinner
+we need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this morning.”
+
+Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them
+to the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+ante-chamber as she said:
+
+“My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your right.”
+
+“Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be complete,”
+ she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch expression on her
+face. “My friend, go into your own room; do me the kindness to dress for
+dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off this ragged clothing;
+see those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric acid which left these
+yellow edges to the holes? Make yourself young again,--I will send you
+Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my dress.”
+
+Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication,
+forgetting that it was locked on his side. He went out through the
+anteroom.
+
+“Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I
+don’t want Martha,” said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+
+Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a joyous
+action, exclaiming: “Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are in your
+muslin gown and that pink sash!” Then he kissed her forehead and pressed
+her hand.
+
+“Mamma, papa has kissed me!” cried Marguerite, running into her mother’s
+room. “He seems so joyous, so happy!”
+
+“My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for
+the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object
+of his search. This day is a festival for us all.”
+
+“My dear mamma,” replied Marguerite, “we shall not be alone in our joy,
+for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put
+on another sash, this is faded.”
+
+“So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?”
+
+“In the parlor, playing with Jean.”
+
+“Where are Gabriel and Felicie?”
+
+“I hear them in the garden.”
+
+“Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father
+has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look
+at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in
+dressing.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children
+through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw
+that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted
+with gold, commonly called “darning-needles.”
+
+“Be good, my darlings,” she said, raising the lower sash of the window
+and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door
+of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in
+joyous tones:--
+
+“You won’t leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+can.”
+
+Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have
+supposed her lame.
+
+“When monsieur carried madame upstairs,” said the old valet, whom she
+met on the staircase, “he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke
+the jaw of that griffin; I’m sure I don’t know who can put it on again.
+There’s our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!”
+
+“Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don’t have it mended at all--it is not
+a misfortune,” said his mistress.
+
+“What can have happened?” thought Lemulquinier; “why isn’t it a
+misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?”
+
+“Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin,” said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
+door.
+
+The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
+that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--
+
+“Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?”
+
+“Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
+exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each.”
+
+“Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day,” she replied. “Stay and dine
+with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext,
+I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about
+it. All is well,” she added, noticing the lawyer’s surprise. “In a few
+months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed.”
+
+Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
+at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
+followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--
+
+“I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+moment.”
+
+Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
+lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
+with a pretended air of indifference.
+
+Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
+good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
+pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
+called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
+and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce
+from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his
+habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to
+indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed the
+shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively with earthly
+interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy. To marry into
+the family of Claes would have been to him an object of extreme desire,
+if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He could seem generous,
+but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And thus, without explaining
+to himself the motive for his change of manner, his behavior was harsh,
+peremptory, and surly, like that of an ordinary business man, when he
+thought the Claes were ruined; accommodating, affectionate, and almost
+servile, when he saw reason to believe in a happy issue to his cousin’s
+labors. Sometimes he beheld an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no
+provincial notary might aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl
+too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial,
+and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and
+kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his
+better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled
+his personal appearance.
+
+Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to
+her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the
+change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed
+its meaning and tried to read her daughter’s mind by a penetrating
+glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young
+girl’s manner showed complete indifference.
+
+After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics
+of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where
+his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his
+boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man,
+and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation
+of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs.
+Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly
+polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk
+stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons,
+a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his
+beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his
+hands, all with such care that he was scarcely recognizable to those
+who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his
+children, his wife, and the notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty
+years old, and whose courteous and affable presence was full of its
+former attractions. The weariness and suffering betrayed by the thin
+face and the clinging of the skin to the bones, had in themselves a sort
+of charm.
+
+“Good-evening, Pierquin,” said Monsieur Claes.
+
+Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+wife’s lap and tossed him in the air.
+
+“See that little fellow!” he exclaimed to the notary. “Doesn’t such a
+pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!” he
+cried, tossing Jean into the air; “down, down! up! down!”
+
+The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the
+ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she
+might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,--simple
+apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+
+“Let me see how you can walk,” said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+
+The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold
+buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his
+boots.
+
+“You are a darling!” cried Balthazar, kissing him; “you are a Claes,
+you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?” he said to his
+eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. “Are you struggling
+valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp
+hold of mathematics?”
+
+Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+that characterized him.
+
+“My dear Pierquin,” he said, “perhaps you have something to say to me.”
+ He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, “Come and see my
+tulips.”
+
+Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to
+repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable,
+so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed
+her, exclaiming:--
+
+“My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+to-day.”
+
+“It is long since I have seen my father so kind,” answered the young
+girl.
+
+Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his
+arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next
+room, the whole family following.
+
+The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with
+paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken
+side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of
+family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs
+of game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully
+arranged here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage
+of strange birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which
+evidently had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, showed the square shape with twisted columns and the low back
+covered with a fringed stuff, common to that period, and glorified by
+Raphael in his picture of the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these
+chairs was now black, but the gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff,
+carefully renewed from time to time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+
+The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this
+room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful
+antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The
+glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen
+in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of
+faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard
+Palissy, came from the English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware
+was massive, with square sides and designs in high relief,--genuine
+family plate, whose pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and
+chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards
+fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion
+altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will readily be supposed
+that the Claes’s household made it a point of honor to possess the best.
+
+All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for
+the daily use of the family. The front house, where the social
+entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels,
+being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost
+to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in
+the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and
+simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew outside
+the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about
+the casements.
+
+“You are faithful to the old traditions, madame,” said Pierquin, as he
+received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread. “This
+is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle
+des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup
+of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of
+Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere
+else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing;
+furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets,
+lances, shields, and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house,
+selling his old furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging
+them for Sevres porcelain,--which does not compare with either old
+Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I’m Flemish to the core;
+my heart actually bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful
+inlaid furniture for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact
+is, society wants to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed,
+even the old methods of art. When people insist on going so fast,
+nothing is conscientiously done. During my last visit to Paris I was
+taken to see the pictures in the Louvre. On my word of honor, they
+are mere screen-painting,--no depth, no atmosphere; the painters were
+actually afraid to put colors on their canvas. And it is they who talk
+of overturning our ancient school of art! Ah, bah!--”
+
+“Our old masters,” replied Balthazar, “studied the combination of colors
+and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain.
+You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less
+cultivated in these days than formerly.”
+
+Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary’s remark
+that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the
+brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she
+had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off the
+thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+
+“Ha! ha!” Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes’s mind
+returned to the conversation, “so they are discussing my work in Douai,
+are they?”
+
+“Yes,” replied the notary, “every one is asking what it is you spend so
+much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a
+man like you should be searching for the Philosopher’s stone. I ventured
+to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was
+attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God’s work
+out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man
+to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I
+share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as
+well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted
+had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you.”
+
+“You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+evil is to make me ridiculous,” said Balthazar. “Ha! so they think me
+ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in
+honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect
+my dear townsmen bestow on wealth.”
+
+Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in
+his tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his
+children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit,
+and pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was
+certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks
+and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart
+which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.
+
+Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about
+the table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of
+his secret hopes. The sudden change in his master’s ways was even more
+significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness
+he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come
+to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his
+master’s researches from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist
+when expected results disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency
+of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in
+whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived
+for his master a superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror,
+admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a
+lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope. Every night he went
+to bed saying to himself, “To-morrow we may float in gold”; and every
+morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of the night before.
+
+His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral
+qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which
+each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen
+thread were called in Flanders, “mulquiniers”; and that no doubt was
+the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from
+a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
+misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of
+a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and
+its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of
+euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of character
+or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and
+seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and shining patches
+that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole
+demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig
+which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.
+
+The old valet’s outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity
+which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to his master,
+the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he
+maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The
+denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pass with an interest mingled
+with awe; to all their questions he returned sibylline answers big with
+mysterious treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he assumed
+an annoying authority over his companions, employing it to further his
+own interests and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler
+of the house. Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply
+attached to the families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for
+Balthazar. If any trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event
+happened to the family, he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer
+as phlegmatically as ever.
+
+Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in
+the garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower
+being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so
+arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain
+dragon’s-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named
+“tulipa Claesiana,” combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of
+each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar’s father, who had
+frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such
+precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant
+always in the parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The
+stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions
+of the plant were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose
+seven colors were distinguishable from each other with the clearly
+defined brilliancy which formerly gave such fabulous value to these
+dazzling plants.
+
+“Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs’ worth of
+tulips,” said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the
+many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty
+of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into
+jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary’s words.
+
+“What good do they do you?” continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar;
+“you ought to sell them.”
+
+“Bah! am I in want of money?” replied Claes, in the tone of a man to
+whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+
+There was a moment’s silence, during which the children made many
+exclamations.
+
+“See this one, mamma!”
+
+“Oh! here’s a beauty!”
+
+“Tell me the name of that one!”
+
+“What a gulf for human reason to sound!” cried Balthazar, raising
+his hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. “A compound of
+hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions,
+under the same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold
+colors, each of which constitutes a distinct result.”
+
+His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so
+rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as
+if remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a
+mysterious sign, saying,--
+
+“You do not yet understand me, but you will.”
+
+Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual
+to him.
+
+“No, I am sure you do not understand him,” said Pierquin, taking his
+coffee from Marguerite’s hand. “The Ethiopian can’t change his skin, nor
+the leopard his spots,” he whispered to Madame Claes. “Have the goodness
+to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn’t draw him out
+of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate.”
+
+So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+kissed little Jean in his mother’s arms, and retired with a low bow.
+
+When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round
+the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was
+causing her by whispering in her ear,--
+
+“I knew how to get rid of him.”
+
+Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him
+see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her
+forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+
+“Let us go back into the parlor,” she said, after a pause.
+
+Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games
+for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not
+notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past
+nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after
+helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in
+the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife’s hand as he talked
+to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire
+without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:--
+
+“Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child.” She drew her down, kissed
+her tenderly on the forehead, and said, “Carry your book into your own
+room; but do not sit up too late.”
+
+“Good-night, my darling daughter,” said Balthazar.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife
+remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last
+glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose
+outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.
+When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of
+emotion,--
+
+“Let us go upstairs.”
+
+Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife’s
+chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The
+good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of
+virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic
+superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender
+feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and
+sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes’s position would have
+wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done
+so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect
+of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a pretty
+creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a necessity.
+No one better understood the meaning of the saying, “A pretty woman is
+self-created,”--a maxim which guided every action of Napoleon’s first
+wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes was ever natural
+and true.
+
+Though Balthazar knew his wife’s chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of
+soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.
+The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of
+the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously
+placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose
+effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The
+gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of
+pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly
+distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors
+of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret
+of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell
+him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of
+her joys and woes.
+
+The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out
+sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The
+silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume
+that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully
+drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding
+the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered
+husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was
+trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her
+throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely
+glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven’s wing, went
+to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no
+sound to penetrate the chamber from without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was
+sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive
+woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful,
+gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman’s greatest charm lies
+in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a
+weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments.
+Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the
+rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden
+rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her
+physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself
+gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for
+a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted
+and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray
+background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa.
+This was what she wanted.
+
+“You promised me,” she said, taking his hand which she held between her
+own magnetic palms, “to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit,
+dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage
+to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to
+understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how
+it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over
+night I had left you happy.”
+
+“Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+coquettishly delightful?”
+
+“Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to
+me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to
+keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of
+all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while
+Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone.
+I hate all that comes between us. If you win the glory for which
+you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--I
+alone--should be the giver of your happiness.”
+
+“No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that
+first led me into this glorious path.”
+
+“A man!” she cried in terror.
+
+“Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in
+1809?”
+
+“Do I remember him!” she exclaimed; “I am often annoyed because my
+memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals
+of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped
+of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!--What awful
+impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any
+inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here.”
+
+“That Polish gentleman,” resumed Balthazar, “was named Adam de
+Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give
+up the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I think,
+by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as
+adepts. When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the
+captain gave a start of surprise. ‘Have you studied chemistry?’ he
+asked. ‘With Lavoisier,’ I answered. ‘You are happy in being rich and
+free,’ he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a
+man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the
+brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be
+expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that startled
+me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last gasp he
+had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation for his
+country’s fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had always felt
+an irresistible vocation. ‘And I see you recognize as I do,’ he added,
+‘that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder, each yield a
+substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the same qualitative
+result.’
+
+“He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he
+said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general
+meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of
+tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred
+my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the
+anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me
+like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah’s tongue; for my
+studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.
+
+“‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘the parity of these three substances, in
+appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
+nature ought to have a single principle. The researches of modern
+chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural
+effects. Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic
+nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all
+animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less
+perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which
+gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more important
+part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the products of
+this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen,
+hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance, non-metallic and
+solid, carbon. Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of
+movement and sensation, denied the power of growth (too hastily
+accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple substances, or
+elements, whose different combinations make its products. Is it probable
+that means should be more numerous where a lesser number of results are
+produced?
+
+“‘My master’s opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have
+one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the
+knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to
+rediscover. Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again;
+we have chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would apparently
+then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we could decompose
+nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but
+three. This brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the
+ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to
+scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet
+little,--much, because the science has never recoiled before difficulty;
+little, in comparison with what remains to be done. Chance has served
+her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure
+carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance possible to create?
+The old alchemists, who thought that gold was decomposable and therefore
+creatable, shrank from the idea of producing the diamond. Yet we have
+discovered the nature and the law of its composition.
+
+“‘As for me,’ he continued, ‘I have gone farther still. An experiment
+proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which
+lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first place, the
+experiment itself.
+
+“‘Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic
+nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
+Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may
+reach the product of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts
+from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis.
+Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity
+to produce after burning them enough ashes for the experiment. Well,
+by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium,
+phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and
+carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress
+had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not
+exist in the brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the
+cress, nor in the distilled water with which the plant was nourished,
+whose composition was known. But since they are no more to be found
+in the seed itself, we can explain their presence in the plant only by
+assuming the existence of a primary element common to all the substances
+contained in the cress, and also to all those by which we environed
+it. Thus the air, the distilled water, the brimstone, and the various
+elements which analysis finds in the cress, namely, potash, lime,
+magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one common principle floating in
+the atmosphere like light of the sun.
+
+“‘From this unimpeachable experiment,’ he cried, ‘I deduce the existence
+of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all created
+things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net meaning
+and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to
+be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine
+humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter, the
+medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all things
+human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+
+“‘It was at this point,’ he went on, ‘that poverty put an end to my
+researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of
+your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to the
+conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME
+MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon.
+The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive
+electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish
+those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal
+existence.
+
+“‘Oh, monsieur!’ he cried, striking his brow, ‘when I know that I
+carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck
+of men who fly at each other’s throats at the word of command without
+knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My
+body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and
+men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My
+soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged
+in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,--for that
+principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same
+environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same
+phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently
+constituted exactly alike,--one produces yellow silk, another white; and
+if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble neither
+father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact surely involves
+the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.
+
+“‘Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe
+that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean
+worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented
+Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the
+type of all the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout
+all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter, Force, and
+Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some
+confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa,
+all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for
+their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise
+alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is
+only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had
+I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with
+Motion. Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to
+their death, my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he
+is soaring towards the Absolute, while I--I shall die like a dog in the
+trenches!’
+
+“When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a
+touching tone of brotherhood, ‘If I see cause for a great experiment
+I will bequeath it to you before I die.’--My Pepita,” cried Balthazar,
+taking his wife’s hands, “tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
+cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
+timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--”
+
+“Oh!” cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
+husband, “that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
+deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness
+of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross?
+did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye
+which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could
+have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor
+father, nor master of your family.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
+piercing glance at his wife, “do you blame your husband for rising above
+the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple
+of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your
+heart! Ah, my Pepita,” he cried, “you do not know what I have done. In
+these three years I have made giant strides--”
+
+His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
+she wept as she listened to him.
+
+“I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
+substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
+Why!” he continued, noticing that his wife wept, “I have even decomposed
+tears. Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium,
+mucin, and water.”
+
+He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted
+Josephine’s features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him
+with outspread wings far away from material existence.
+
+“This analysis, my dear,” he went on, “is one of the most convincing
+proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its
+hearth is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction
+of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case
+combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner, again,
+vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations producing
+dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain
+vegetables which existed before the period of the last cataclysm. But
+each time that nature has perfected an organism and then, for some
+unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation, instinct, or
+intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system), these three
+agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in direct proportion
+to the result obtained. Man, who represents the highest point of
+intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by which we arrive at
+a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is, among all zoological
+creations, the one in which combustion is found in its most intense
+degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen to some extent in the
+phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a man’s body reveals to
+our analysis. May not these substances be traces left within him of
+the passage of the electric fluid which is the principle of all
+fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself by a greater
+variety of compounds in him than in any other animal? Should not he have
+faculties above those of all other created beings for the purpose of
+absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute principle? and may he not
+assimilate that principle so as to produce, in some more perfect
+mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a retort. In my
+judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other
+product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an
+ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated
+to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the
+dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the force resulting
+from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--”
+
+“Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
+love--”
+
+“An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!”
+
+As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
+face rose by degrees to inspiration. “I shall make metals,” he cried; “I
+shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!”
+
+“Will you be the happier?” she asked in despair. “Accursed science!
+accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
+sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.”
+
+“Oh! oh! God!”
+
+“He denies Him!” she cried, wringing her hands. “Claes, God wields a
+power that you can never gain.”
+
+At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
+looked at his wife and trembled.
+
+“What power?” he asked.
+
+“Primal force--motion,” she replied. “This is what I learn from the
+books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
+like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to
+them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them,
+can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga
+wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the
+atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating.”
+
+“If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create.”
+
+“Will nothing stop him?” cried Pepita. “Oh! my love, my love! it is
+killed! I have lost him!”
+
+She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity
+of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than
+ever through her tears.
+
+“Yes,” she resumed in a broken voice, “you are dead to all. I see it
+but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
+it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
+companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would
+fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you
+to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within
+your breast the irresistible power that has mastered you--But no; God is
+good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores
+you, of the children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone
+who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds
+of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you,--nothing
+guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it
+otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred
+thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth!
+I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all
+I possess and say, ‘Take it, fling it into your furnace, turn it into
+smoke’; and I should laugh to see it float away in vapor. Were you poor,
+I would beg without shame for the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could
+my body yield your hateful Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those
+fires with joy, since your glory, your delight is in that unfound
+secret. But our children, Claes, our children! what will become of them
+if you do not soon discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin
+came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and
+cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I might spare you
+the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
+silver.”
+
+She saw her husband’s eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
+despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+
+“My friend,” she cried, “refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you,
+do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them,
+Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a
+wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood has
+sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes
+wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your
+life! And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the cause of my
+children before you, and not my own?”
+
+Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth
+her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her
+rival. Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her
+feet.
+
+“Have I caused you such grief?” he said, in the tone of a man waking
+from a painful dream.
+
+“My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,”
+ she said, passing her hand over his hair. “Sit here beside me,” she
+continued, pointing to the sofa. “Ah! I can forget it all now, now that
+you come back to us; all can be repaired--but you will not abandon
+me again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman’s
+influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the
+happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You
+may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a
+little for your good. I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.
+Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love Chemistry better than you love
+us. Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart;
+but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half. Tell me, is not my
+disinterestedness sublime?”
+
+She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
+women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
+contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
+habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth
+of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power she
+thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
+
+“Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may wish
+us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal
+disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of looking
+into futurity.”
+
+“Yes,” he exclaimed, “by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
+on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
+class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The prophet
+sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare and too
+obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation.”
+
+“Is this,” she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she
+had so unfortunately reawakened, “what you call an affinity?”
+
+“No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are neutral,
+they produce no reaction--”
+
+“Oh! hush, hush,” she cried, “you will make me die of grief. I can never
+bear to see my rival in the transports of your love.”
+
+“But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of my
+family. You are the basis of all my hopes.”
+
+“Ah, look me in the eyes!”
+
+The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole
+person Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and
+muslin.
+
+“Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science,” he said. “If I fall
+back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must drag me
+from them; I desire it.”
+
+She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,--a
+hand that was both strong and delicate.
+
+“But I ask more,” she said.
+
+“You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all,” he answered.
+
+“I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science,” she said,
+with fire in her eyes.
+
+“So be it--let Chemistry go to the devil!”
+
+“This moment effaces all!” she cried. “Make me suffer now, if you will.”
+
+Tears came to Balthazar’s eyes, as he heard these words.
+
+“You were right, love,” he said. “I have seen you through a veil; I have
+not understood you.”
+
+“If it concerned only me,” she said, “willingly would I have suffered
+in silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign. But
+your sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate your
+property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world
+will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But
+surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that his wife has
+shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of this no more,”
+ she cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. “To-night, my Claes,
+let us not be less than happy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
+Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
+to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did not
+enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
+move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months, only
+returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes determined
+to give, as in former years, to commemorate his wedding-day. He now
+began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder which his experiments
+and his indifference had brought into his business affairs.
+
+Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named Martha,
+who had never left her mistress since the latter left her convent. It
+was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole society of Douai
+with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all difficulties by
+proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the gardener’s son as
+a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin’s manservant. Thus the pinched
+circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the community.
+
+During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+cleverly able to outwit her husband’s listlessness. She commissioned him
+to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand staircase,
+the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque to order one
+of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the burgher tables in the
+northern departments. A fete like that the Claes were about to give is a
+serious affair, involving thought and care and active correspondence, in
+a land where traditions of hospitality put the family honor so much
+at stake that to servants as well as masters a grand dinner is like a
+victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived from Ostend, grouse were
+imported from Scotland, fruits came from Paris; in short, not the
+smallest accessory was lacking to the hereditary luxury.
+
+A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
+government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary fete
+of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion to the
+neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it
+a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was
+talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes,
+the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the
+events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These preparations
+now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest.
+Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the servant of
+science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the
+master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of
+surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special character
+to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all
+other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
+fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
+and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+
+The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
+luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the
+Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the
+grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made
+known on the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound
+grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved
+by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
+
+Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
+from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote,
+from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his
+promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the
+subject of the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their
+meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did
+honor to his patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this
+festal day brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the
+House of Claes shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite
+of its magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands
+of six generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last
+time.
+
+Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
+the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially
+by the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of
+her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters
+of that country loved to represent,--the head perfectly rounded and
+full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow,
+gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness
+which did not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the
+high square brow an expression of firmness, hidden at present under an
+apparent calmness and docility. Without being sad or melancholy, she
+seemed to have little natural enjoyment. Reflectiveness, order, a
+sense of duty, the three chief expressions of Flemish nature, were the
+characteristics of a face that seemed cold at first sight, but to which
+the eye was recalled by a certain grace of outline and a placid pride
+which seemed the pledges of domestic happiness. By one of those freaks
+which physiologists have not yet explained, she bore no likeness to
+either father or mother, but was the living image of her maternal
+great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges, whose portrait, religiously
+preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
+
+The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters forbade
+the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the
+pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however, retired early; only
+the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the
+intimate friends of the family. Little by little the brilliantly lighted
+house, to which all the notabilities of Douai had flocked, sank into
+silence, and by one o’clock in the morning the great gallery was
+deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon after another,
+and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant, grew dark and
+gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before the family. When
+the Claes returned to their own appartement, Balthazar gave his wife the
+letter he had received from the Polish officer: Josephine returned it
+with a mournful gesture; she foresaw the coming doom.
+
+From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the weariness
+and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after the family
+breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little Jean, and
+talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or embroidery
+or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the talk, and
+seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his wife came
+down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in an easy-chair
+looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite undisturbed by the
+rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was brought in, he read it
+slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to kill the time. Then he
+would get up, look at the sky through the window panes, go back to his
+chair and mend the fire drearily, as though he were deprived of all
+consciousness of his own movements by the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
+was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
+length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who
+have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects
+of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of material
+existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of expansion which
+need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of material life
+cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the
+mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving natures. Consequently,
+two isolated beings who know each other thoroughly ought to seek their
+enjoyments in the higher regions of thought; for it is impossible to
+satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them.
+Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects,
+he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart
+a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great
+geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a
+rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know
+all, and comprehend all.
+
+During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
+been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
+ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of
+his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources
+were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine’s
+relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis
+XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or
+the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the sham embassies
+from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues
+of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the
+expedients of a family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst
+of his grandeur he felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had
+rocked the cradles of his children was often at her wit’s end to rock
+his, or soothe the monarch now suffering from his misuse of men and
+things, of life and God. Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much
+power. Stifling in the clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the
+pomps of Science, of treasures for the human race, of glory for himself.
+He suffered as artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered
+beneath the pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two
+sovereigns; though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward
+force, the other by his weakness.
+
+What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
+she called society to the rescue, and gave two “cafes” every week. Cafes
+at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which, during
+a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and liqueurs
+which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the Flemish
+dainties and took their “cafe noir” or their “cafe au lait frappe,”
+ while the women sang ballads, discussed each other’s toilettes, and
+related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture by Mieris or
+Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet plumes, or the
+beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet, Balthazar’s
+efforts to play the part of host, his constrained courtesy, his forced
+animation, left him the next day in a state of languor which showed but
+too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
+
+These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
+it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they
+retarded Claes’s fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though he
+never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for
+the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have
+the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick
+person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner
+with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the
+fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When
+night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from
+the importunities of thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter
+another day,--seeming to measure time as the tired traveller measures
+the desert he is forced to cross.
+
+If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see
+the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings of the
+mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the heart. She
+dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to the laughter
+of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air of a man
+absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw him shake
+off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem cheerful, that
+he might not distress others. The little coquetries of the father with
+his daughters, or his games with little Jean, moistened the eyes of
+the poor wife, who often left the room to hide the feelings that heroic
+effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of which is well understood by
+women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks their heart. At such times
+Madame Claes longed to say, “Kill me, and do what you will!”
+
+Little by little Balthazar’s eyes lost their fire and took the glaucous
+opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His attentions to his
+wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing, grew heavy and inert.
+These symptoms became more marked towards the end of April, terrifying
+Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now intolerable, and who had all
+along reproached herself a thousand times while she admired the Flemish
+loyalty which kept her husband faithful to his promise.
+
+At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring him
+back to life.
+
+“Dear friend,” she said, “I release you from your promise.”
+
+Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+
+“You are thinking of your researches, are you not?” she continued.
+
+He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from remonstrating,
+Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss into which they
+were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed it, smiling.
+
+“Thank you,” she said; “now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
+me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
+jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
+and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
+diamonds.”
+
+The joy that suddenly lighted her husband’s face was like a death-knell
+to the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man’s passion was stronger
+than himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him to walk
+without faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge of a
+precipice. For him faith, for her doubt,--for her the heavier burden:
+does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to
+believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her connivance
+in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
+
+“The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
+Pepita,” said Claes, deeply moved.
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
+the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
+and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
+whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the
+contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to
+give vent to the joy that choked him.
+
+From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
+The future of her children, their father’s credit, were two motives as
+powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+unhappy woman never knew another hour’s peace of mind. The demon of
+Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
+agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
+and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed
+by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those
+of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit
+and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for
+compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the
+Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with
+terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an
+expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and
+feelings raged in her heart and mind. She beheld her children’s future
+fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not saving their father’s life? was
+it not her first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her
+for a moment.
+
+She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
+even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
+were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
+seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
+through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
+building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
+her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
+breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar’s
+experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming
+success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she
+looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
+Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
+the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the other.
+
+Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the
+poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair
+which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of
+the mother trembling for her children. She now practised the doleful
+silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing the gloom that
+pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that melancholy parlor
+without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad maternal foresight,
+she trained her daughters to household work, and tried to make them
+skilful in womanly employments, that they might have the means of
+living if destitution came. The outward calm of this quiet home covered
+terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer Balthazar had used
+the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty thousand francs in
+debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
+
+In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without result
+as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when he ended
+the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his impotence crushed
+him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted enormous sums of money
+drove him to despair. It was a frightful catastrophe. He left the
+garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and threw himself into a chair
+in the midst of his children, remaining motionless for some minutes as
+though dead, making no answer to the questions his wife pressed upon
+him. Tears came at last to his relief, and he rushed to his own chamber
+that no one might witness his despair.
+
+Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone with
+her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man, these
+broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the husband
+and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past sufferings. The
+victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said to her in a tone of
+dreadful conviction: “I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of
+my children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill
+myself,”--the words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband’s
+nature enough to fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an
+inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized
+her, and was all the more dangerous because she controlled its violent
+effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
+
+“My friend,” she said, “I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
+does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin,
+but an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de
+Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from
+ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is
+enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all
+that you owe to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an
+account against you.”
+
+Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
+now white.
+
+“Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
+they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus,
+to display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families:
+he thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
+recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
+amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
+continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with very
+little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in course of
+time and by economy; meantime you will be happy.”
+
+Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector
+of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
+Pepita’s, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
+convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
+with a nervous shudder.
+
+“I dared not tell you,” he said, “that between me and the Unconditioned,
+the Absolute, scarcely a hair’s breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
+only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
+centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,--in short, in a
+vacuum.”
+
+Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
+passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem in
+chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to the
+parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened daughters,
+and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her hands, kneeling
+one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her grief, and asking
+at intervals, “Mother, what is it?”
+
+“My poor children, I am dying; I feel it.”
+
+The answer struck home to Marguerite’s heart; she saw, for the first
+time on her mother’s face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which only
+comes on olive-tinted skins.
+
+“Martha, Martha!” cried Felicie, “come quickly; mamma wants you.”
+
+The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the livid
+hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in Spanish,--
+
+“Body of Christ! madame is dying!”
+
+Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+
+“Don’t alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha,” said her
+mistress. “My poor dear girls,” she added, pressing Marguerite and
+Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; “I wish I could live
+long enough to see you married and happy. Martha,” she continued, “tell
+Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name to come
+here.”
+
+The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha,
+both devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their
+own affections. Martha’s dreadful announcement,--“Madame is dying;
+monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,”--forced
+certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier.
+He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
+one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
+boudoir of a fine lady.
+
+“I knew how it would end,” said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+“There’s no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
+himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat.”
+
+Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
+which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
+Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
+made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a motion
+worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large mouth with
+bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+
+“Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,” he
+said; “and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold. There’s
+not the thickness of a farthing between us and--”
+
+“Well, you’ve got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don’t you give ‘em
+to monsieur? he’s your master, and if you are so sure of his doings--”
+
+“You don’t know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
+and heat the water,” remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+
+“I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
+and if you are allowed to have your way, you’ll make ducks and drakes of
+everything till there’s nothing left.”
+
+“And monsieur,” added Martha, entering the kitchen, “will kill madame,
+just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won’t let him swallow
+up everything he’s got. He’s possessed by the devil; anybody can see
+that. You don’t risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
+haven’t got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when
+we are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
+Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l’Abbe de Solis.”
+
+“I’ve got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the laboratory
+in order,” said the valet. “Besides, it’s too far--go yourself.”
+
+“Just hear the brute!” cried Martha. “Pray who is to give madame her
+foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+head.”
+
+“Mulquinier,” said Marguerite, coming into the servants’ hall, which
+adjoined the kitchen, “on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call at
+Dr. Pierquin’s house and ask him to come here at once.”
+
+“Ha! you’ve got to go now,” said Josette.
+
+“Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order,”
+ said Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
+despotic air.
+
+“Father,” said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
+descending the stairs, “can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
+town?”
+
+“Now you’re forced to go, you old barbarian!” cried Martha, as she heard
+Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter’s bidding.
+
+The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the family
+whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two women and
+Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of increasing the
+loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+
+This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the future
+of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor in
+misfortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine’s
+condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He saw
+them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor,
+too weak to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed
+abstractedly at his daughters now attending on their mother, without
+inquiring the cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or
+Jean attempted to speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to
+Balthazar. Such a scene was of a nature to make a young girl think; and
+Marguerite, placed as she was between her father and mother, was old
+enough and sensible enough to weigh their conduct.
+
+There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame
+Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar
+impelled her to justify in Marguerite’s eyes conduct that might, to the
+upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The very
+respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making
+herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his
+meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal
+majesty. Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only
+increased Marguerite’s admiration for her mother, to whom she was more
+particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives. This
+feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose causes
+naturally occupied the young girl’s mind. No human power could have
+hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by Josette, from
+enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of her home
+during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes’s reserve,
+Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the domestic
+drama. She was soon to be her mother’s active confidante, and later,
+under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+
+Madame Claes’s watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter,
+to whom she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards
+Balthazar. The firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in
+the young girl made her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle
+between father and daughter whenever her own death should make the
+latter mistress of the household. The poor woman had reached a point
+where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death
+itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the
+resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from
+encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future
+disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She
+hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she
+studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite,
+trusting that his daughter might continue to be to him an angel of
+love, while exercising over the family a protecting and conservative
+authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love upon her dear
+ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not willing to lower
+the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her into the secret
+dangers of his scientific passion before it became necessary to do so.
+She studied Marguerite’s soul and character, seeking to discover if the
+girl’s own nature would lead her to be a mother to her brothers and her
+sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+
+Madame Claes’s last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly
+to the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the
+care of property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of the
+Absolute.
+
+The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+monotonous beating of Balthazar’s foot, which he continued to trot,
+wholly unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was
+sitting beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid,
+convulsed face, turned now and again to her father, wondering at his
+indifference. Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw the
+Abbe de Solis leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing the
+court-yard.
+
+“Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel,” said Felicie.
+
+“That good young man!” exclaimed Madame Claes; “I am glad to welcome
+him.”
+
+Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother’s lips. For
+the last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred mysterious
+feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts that had lain
+dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to Madame Claes on
+the occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of
+those imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life;
+and their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief
+sketch of the two personages now first introduced into the history of
+this family.
+
+It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
+of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
+family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
+elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at
+the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+
+The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
+face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes.
+He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a
+painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and
+obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand.
+His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate,
+suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious
+purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning,
+his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been
+successively a Dominican friar, the “grand penitencier” of Toledo,
+and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French
+Revolution had not intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family
+would have made him one of the highest dignitaries of the Church;
+but the grief he felt for the death of the young duke, Madame Claes’s
+brother, who had been his pupil, turned him from active life, and he now
+devoted himself to the education of his nephew, who was made an orphan
+at an early age.
+
+After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
+near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
+Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led
+him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
+Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
+made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
+those ideas, he remained there,--all the more willingly because he
+was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
+continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
+censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame Guyon. His morals were
+rigid, his life exemplary, and he was believed to have visions. In spite
+of his own detachment from the things of life, his affection for his
+nephew made him careful of the young man’s interests. When a work of
+charity was to be done, the old abbe put the faithful of his flock
+under contribution before having recourse to his own means; and his
+patriarchal authority was so well established, his motives so pure, his
+discernment so rarely at fault, that every one was ready to answer
+his appeal. To give an idea of the contrast between the uncle and the
+nephew, we may compare the old man to a willow on the borders of a
+stream, hollowed to a skeleton and barely alive, and the young man to a
+sweet-brier clustering with roses, whose erect and graceful stems spring
+up about the hoary trunk of the old tree as if they would support it.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at his
+side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate sensibility,
+of half-dreamy innocence,--those fleeting flowers of youth which bloom
+perennially in souls that are nourished on religious principles. The old
+priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his pupil, preparing him for
+the trials of life by constant study and a discipline that was almost
+cloisteral. Such an education, which would launch the youth unstained
+upon the world and render him happy, provided he were fortunate in his
+earliest affections, had endowed him with a purity of spirit which gave
+to his person something of the charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest
+eyes, veiling a strong and courageous soul, sent forth a light that
+vibrated in the soul as the tones of a crystal bell sound their
+undulations on the ear. His face, though regular, was expressive, and
+charmed the eye with its clear-cut outline, the harmony of its
+lines, and the perfect repose which came of a heart at peace. All was
+harmonious. His black hair, his brown eyes and eyebrows, heightened
+the effect of a white skin and a brilliant color. His voice was such as
+might have been expected from his beautiful face; and something feminine
+in his movements accorded well with the melody of its tones and with
+the tender brightness of his eyes. He seemed unaware of the charm he
+exercised by his modest silence, the half-melancholy reserve of his
+manner, and the respectful attentions he paid to his uncle.
+
+Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the
+old abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking
+for obstructions that might trip his uncle’s feet and guiding him to
+a smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There
+was something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in
+the obedience that never cavilled at the old man’s orders; it seemed as
+though there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had given
+him. When the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in their own
+home or in the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes lift his
+head with so much dignity, as if to assert his metal should any other
+man assail him, that men of honor were moved at the sight like artists
+before a glorious picture; for noble sentiments ring as loudly in the
+soul from living incarnations as from the imagery of art.
+
+Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de
+Solis was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a
+man, invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity.
+Entering hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times
+to hide their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in
+black and looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face
+of a young man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their
+mutual astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each
+other in their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again
+with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal. Marguerite
+took her mother’s arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and
+find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like
+motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his
+arm. The light was cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures,
+and the half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances
+which are the joy of timid natures. Neither went so far, even in
+thought, as the first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble
+which stirs the heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from
+fastidiousness or modesty.
+
+The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed
+to overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a
+child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have
+thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love,
+listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure
+flames already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an
+irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first
+perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the
+musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more
+shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life? The first
+heart in which we draw the breath of love,--is it not our home, our
+native land? Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of
+music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and
+reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+
+When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an
+angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon
+Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought
+on the canvas with the living thought beside him. This involuntary and
+delightful homage was understood and treasured. The old abbe gravely
+praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and
+the maiden were silent.
+
+Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture
+gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders,
+all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this
+vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite’s
+mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray
+when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes. That voice,
+whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart,
+completed the revelation that had come to her,--a revelation which
+Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often
+happens that the man whom destiny employs to waken love in the heart
+of a young girl is ignorant of his work and leaves it unfinished.
+Marguerite bowed confusedly; her true farewell was in the glance which
+seemed unwilling to lose so pure and lovely a vision. Like a child
+she wanted her melody. Their parting took place at the foot of the old
+staircase near the parlor; and when Marguerite re-entered the room she
+watched the uncle and the nephew till the street-door closed upon them.
+
+Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which caused
+her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion observe
+her daughter’s manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to the house
+on the occasion of her illness, she was too violently agitated to notice
+the color that rushed into Marguerite’s face and betrayed the tumult of
+a virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By the time the old abbe was
+announced, Marguerite had taken up her sewing and appeared to give it
+such attention that she bowed to the uncle and nephew without looking at
+them. Monsieur Claes mechanically returned their salutation and left
+the room with the air of a man called away by his occupations. The good
+Dominican sat down beside Madame Claes and looked at her with one of
+those searching glances by which he penetrated the minds of others; the
+sight of Monsieur Claes and his wife was enough to make him aware of a
+catastrophe.
+
+“My children,” said the mother, “go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+Emmanuel your father’s tulips.”
+
+Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie’s arm and looked at the young
+man, who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion. When
+all four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other side,
+leaving Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young de
+Solis, led him to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the same
+manner year after year by Lemulquinier.
+
+“Do you love tulips?” asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+deep silence,--a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+
+“Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their beauties.
+They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber in which I
+live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that are softer
+to the eye.”
+
+Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it
+was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness,
+the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+
+“Do you work very hard?” she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with
+a back, painted green. “Here,” she continued, “the tulips are not so
+close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors
+are dazzling; they give pain.”
+
+“Do I work hard?” replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+smoothed the gravel with his foot. “Yes; I work at many things. My uncle
+wished to make me a priest.”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+
+“I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage
+to oppose my uncle’s wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a
+poor orphan!”
+
+“What do you mean to be?” asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+gesture, “I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.”
+
+“Oh, mademoiselle,” said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender
+admiration, “except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am
+studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I
+were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to
+live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love.
+That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a
+daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold
+and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is
+emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher
+like me.”
+
+“I have always called the daisies marguerites,” she said.
+
+Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
+Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he
+feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said
+at last, “I dared not pronounce your name”--then he paused.
+
+“A teacher?” she said.
+
+“Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+taste for historical researches.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+That “ah!” so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a
+foolish laugh and said:--
+
+“You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.”
+
+“My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I
+think,” said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+
+“Your mother seems to me greatly changed,” said Emmanuel.
+
+“She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and
+we can only try to share them with her.”
+
+Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown
+to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the
+price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in
+Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when
+poverty should overtake her children. With much deliberation, and after
+weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one
+of prudence. He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which
+he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the
+estimation of others.
+
+The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with letters
+of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service
+to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the
+gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of
+eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were
+paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that
+nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to
+the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel
+de Solis was commissioned by Claes to receive the price of the pictures,
+which were thereupon packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale
+from the people of Douai.
+
+Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he
+had borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his
+chemical researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its noblest
+ornament. Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret; he felt
+so sure of repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he reserved
+the right of redemption. In Josephine’s eyes a hundred pictures were
+as nothing compared to domestic happiness and the satisfaction of her
+husband’s mind; moreover, she refilled the gallery with other paintings
+taken from the reception-rooms, and to conceal the gaps which these left
+in the front house, she changed the arrangement of the furniture.
+
+When Balthazar’s debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and his
+nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats reserved by
+Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the Dutch ducats, to
+which the events of the Continental war had given a commercial value.
+One hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were buried in the cellar of
+the house in which the abbe and his nephew resided.
+
+Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock
+he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor
+and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely
+absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken
+France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons,
+drew him from his laboratory; he was neither husband, father, nor
+citizen,--solely chemist.
+
+Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she
+was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own
+chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished
+joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her,
+she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring
+the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better suited to her
+condition. The bed in which the unfortunate woman ended her life was
+placed between the fireplace and a window looking on the garden. There
+she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of
+her young daughters, striving to leave within them the fire of her own.
+Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations, allowed maternal love
+to have its way. The mother now seemed the more delightful because her
+motherhood had blossomed late. Like all generous persons, she passed
+through sensitive phases of feeling that she mistook for remorse.
+Believing that she had defrauded her children of the tenderness that
+should have been theirs, she sought to redeem those imaginary wrongs;
+bestowing attentions and tender cares which made her precious to them;
+she longed to make her children live, as it were, within her heart; to
+shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to cherish them enough in the few
+remaining days to redeem the time during which she had neglected them.
+The sufferings of her mind gave to her words and her caresses a glowing
+warmth that issued from her soul. Her eyes caressed her children, her
+voice with its yearning intonations touched their hearts, her hand
+showered blessings on their heads.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
+received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
+the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes’s state of health seemed a
+sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband’s debts
+put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes
+to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
+occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
+completely out of people’s minds. During those two years Douai was so
+often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either
+by the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of
+the country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were
+in peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
+himself.
+
+The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
+the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
+rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
+hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength
+to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the
+same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon
+the room. The monotony of this existence was broken only on the days
+when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame
+Claes.
+
+While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
+Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
+not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
+spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
+words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them
+so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual
+understanding surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she
+was, back to the young and happy past which gave such bitterness to
+the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling
+repressed the sweet half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the
+saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively divined.
+
+No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
+nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
+which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
+and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development.
+There are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of
+Madame Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life
+has smiled; these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time
+of joy, seasons that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are
+other loves, framed in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures
+are painful, costly, burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or
+blackened by despair. The love in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel,
+as yet unknown to them for love, the sentiment that budded into life
+beneath the gloomy arches of the picture-gallery, beside the stern old
+abbe, in a still and silent moment, that love so grave and so discreet,
+yet rich in tender depths, in secret delights that were luscious to the
+taste as stolen grapes snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in
+coming years the sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its
+birth.
+
+Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
+they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
+deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
+shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
+becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium
+of communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
+supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
+hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
+distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother’s
+sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of unuttered
+promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of Raphael
+painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither avowed;
+they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not know what
+wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their heads. They
+doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow them, they
+stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to say to
+each other, “Shall we end our days together?”
+
+The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
+comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
+through Balthazar. However painful her husband’s presence might be to
+her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
+he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
+moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying woman
+would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and her
+daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they forgave
+him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some sudden
+illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
+only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
+Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
+their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of the
+being he had once so passionately loved.
+
+When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
+Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
+strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
+brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
+came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her
+cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, “My dear wife, how are
+you to-day?” she answered, “Better, dear friend,” and made him think she
+would be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great
+that he accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife
+was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his
+alone she was living.
+
+A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
+shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
+presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to
+visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two
+beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare
+intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve
+which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a time when
+even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon
+to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of separation, which
+might have killed her had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became
+so great that there were times when she was joyful in the thought that
+he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar
+in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his own way, she lived
+in the happiness she had procured for him,--a shadowy joy, and yet it
+satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced
+herself to believe it; and she glided over that icy surface, not daring
+to rest her weight upon it lest it should break and drown her soul in a
+gulf of awful nothingness.
+
+No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
+consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
+condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks
+of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
+February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the
+words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+
+“Madame,” said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+hear the conversation, “Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
+protect the future of your children.”
+
+Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
+she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
+which affected him.
+
+His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
+herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
+wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
+pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
+courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
+remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
+and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+
+Marguerite’s management of the household since her mother’s illness had
+amply fulfilled the dying woman’s hopes that Madame Claes was able to
+look upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident
+that she herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both
+women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made
+between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the
+daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes
+rested from her writing, Marguerite said: “Mother?” then she dropped as
+if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask
+the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal
+the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she
+might not see the superscription.
+
+“You can read it, my child,” said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
+
+The young girl read the words, “To my daughter Marguerite.”
+
+“We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile,” said Madame
+Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+
+Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
+hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling
+by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been
+brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months
+was professor of history and philosophy.
+
+“Dear children, we must part!” she cried. “You have never forsaken me,
+never! and he who--”
+
+She stopped.
+
+“Monsieur Emmanuel,” said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother’s
+face, “go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse.”
+
+Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
+urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, “I will come.”
+
+“Emmanuel,” said Madame Claes when he returned to her, “take my
+sons away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
+sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand.”
+
+When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
+understood her and sent Felicie away.
+
+“I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma,” said Marguerite
+who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased
+the wound Pierquin had given. “I have had no money for the household
+expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months’ wages to the
+servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
+dare to do so. You don’t know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
+gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?”
+
+“He never told me!” exclaimed Madame Claes. “My God! thou callest me to
+thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?”
+
+She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
+eyes.
+
+“Marguerite,” she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, “here is
+a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death,
+when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are
+without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but
+take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few
+hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be economical.
+Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,--and it
+may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret
+whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will
+no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it of you,--should that time
+come, treat him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile
+the interests of which you will be the sole protector with the duty
+which you owe to a father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness
+and his life to the glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act,
+his intentions are noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him
+once more kind and affectionate--YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say
+these words to you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften
+the anguish of my death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside
+your father; to cause him no grief; never to reproach him; never to
+condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate guardian of the home until--his
+work accomplished--he is again the master of his family.”
+
+“I understand you, dear mother,” said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+eyelids of the dying woman. “I will do as you wish.”
+
+“Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
+management of the property and the household. If you married, your
+husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
+family and disturb your father’s life.”
+
+Marguerite looked at her mother and said, “Have you nothing else to say
+to me about my marriage?”
+
+“Can you hesitate, my child?” cried the dying woman in alarm.
+
+“No,” the daughter answered; “I promise to obey you.”
+
+“Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you,” said the mother,
+shedding hot tears. “Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
+Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
+guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
+sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
+him--too much.”
+
+She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
+gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
+violent.
+
+A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
+and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
+ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
+looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
+
+“Where is my husband?”
+
+Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
+uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
+spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
+through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
+
+“Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
+last sacraments,” she cried with the violence of indignation.
+
+“I am coming,” answered Balthazar.
+
+Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
+him. Madame Claes’s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband
+did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered,
+Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+“Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?” she said to him with an angelic
+tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+
+“I have done it!” he cried joyfully; “Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
+principle of--”
+
+A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
+
+“What did they tell me?” he demanded. “Are you worse? What is the
+matter?”
+
+“This is the matter, monsieur,” whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
+at his conduct; “your wife is dying, and you have killed her.”
+
+Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
+went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
+Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
+tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+“You are dying, and I have killed you!” he said. “What does he mean?”
+
+“My husband,” she answered, “I only lived in your love, and you have
+taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.”
+
+“Leave us,” said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
+“Have I for one moment ceased to love you?” he went on, sitting down
+beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+
+“My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I have
+not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
+full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are
+not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
+functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to
+all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married
+days; such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen
+into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence unlimited, the tender
+habits of affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in
+time: we live together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions
+from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word,
+one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet, you have sold your last
+pictures, you have sold even the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing
+money on your property, and have said no word to me. Ah! I go from
+life weary of life. If you are doing wrong, if you delude yourself in
+following the unattainable, have I not shown you that my love could
+share your faults, could walk beside you and be happy, though you led me
+in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,--that was my glory; it is
+now my death. Balthazar, my illness has lasted long; it began on the
+day when here, in this place where I am about to die, you showed me that
+Science was more to you than Family. And now the end has come; your wife
+is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune and wife were yours,--you could
+do what you willed with your own; but on the day of my death my property
+goes to my children, and you cannot touch it; what will then become of
+you? I am telling you the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far;
+when I am gone will anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now
+your life? If you have sacrificed your wife, your children will count
+but little in the scale; for I must be just and own you loved me
+above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have cast into the
+gulf,--and what have you found?”
+
+At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
+face.
+
+“Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children,” continued the
+dying woman. “You are called in derision ‘Claes the alchemist’; soon
+it will be ‘Claes the madman.’ For myself, I believe in you. I know
+you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is
+mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy
+with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be ruined.
+I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me consolation for
+my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let
+me be certain that my children will not want for bread--Ah, nothing,
+nothing, not even you, can calm my fears.”
+
+“I swear,” said Claes, “to--”
+
+“No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath,” she said,
+interrupting him. “You owed us your protection; we have been without it
+seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither wife
+nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His virtues
+are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot
+belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about
+him, like a majestic tree--and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the
+height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for this last day
+to tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings
+of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo
+in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead,
+dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her
+joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But
+those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my
+anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!”
+
+“Lemulquinier!” cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+
+The old man appeared.
+
+“Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be careful,
+but destroy all. I renounce Science,” he said to his wife.
+
+“Too late,” she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. “Marguerite!” she
+cried, feeling herself about to die.
+
+Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
+saw her mother’s eyes now glazing.
+
+“MARGUERITE!” repeated the dying woman.
+
+The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
+bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
+forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
+
+Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
+foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
+virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
+Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter
+judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his
+daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love with
+which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to
+her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must ever
+hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his attendant
+genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion, denying him the
+strength to carry his repentance into action: he feared himself.
+
+When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
+minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
+The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
+woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to
+enter it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
+hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
+the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by
+ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers, anathematizes those
+who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion (the hypocrite!) in
+weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+
+The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a
+few flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist,
+doing homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and
+spades. Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,--the fi, fo, fum of
+collective grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with
+neither more nor less of feeling, at all hours and in every town in
+France,--they proceeded to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin
+was the first to observe that the death of this excellent woman was
+a mercy, for her husband had made her unhappy; and it was even more
+fortunate for her children: she was unable while living to refuse her
+money to the husband she adored; but now that she was dead, Claes was
+debarred from touching it. Thereupon all present calculated the fortune
+of that poor Madame Claes, wondered how much she had laid by (had she,
+in fact, laid by anything?), made an inventory of her jewels, rummaged
+in her wardrobe, peeped into her drawers, while the afflicted family
+were still weeping and praying around her death-bed.
+
+Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes’s possessions
+in her own right--to use the notarial phrase--might still be recovered,
+and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of francs; basing
+this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,--whose timber, counting
+the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval growths, and the recent
+plantations, had immensely increased in value during the last twelve
+years,--and partly on Balthazar’s own property, of which enough remained
+to “cover” the claims of his children, if the liquidation of their
+mother’s fortune did not yield sufficient to release him. Mademoiselle
+Claes was still, in Pierquin’s slang, “a four-hundred-thousand-franc
+girl.” “But,” he added, “if she doesn’t marry,--a step which would
+of course separate her interests and permit us to sell the forest and
+auction, and so realize the property of the minor children and reinvest
+it where the father can’t lay hands on it,--Claes is likely to ruin them
+all.”
+
+Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy to
+win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the lawyer the
+compliment of suggesting that he might be the man. Pierquin, however,
+found so many good reasons to reject the suggested matches as unworthy
+of Marguerite’s position, that the confabulators glanced at each
+other and smiled, and took malicious pleasure in prolonging this truly
+provincial method of annoyance. Pierquin had already decided that Madame
+Claes’s death would have a favorable effect upon his suit, and he began
+mentally to cut up the body in his own interests.
+
+“That good woman,” he said to himself as he went home to bed, “was as
+proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey,
+hey! why couldn’t I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere
+Claes is drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after
+convincing Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her
+brothers and sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be glad
+to get rid of a girl who is likely to thwart him.”
+
+He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded for
+his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the provinces
+there was certainly not a better brought-up or more delicately lovely
+young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her grace, were like
+those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to name lest he
+should betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments were lofty, her
+principles religious, she would undoubtedly make him a faithful wife:
+moreover, she not only flattered the vanity which influences every man
+more or less in the choice of a wife, but she gratified his pride by
+the high consideration which her family, doubly ennobled, enjoyed in
+Flanders,--a consideration which her husband of course would share.
+
+The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several
+thousand-franc notes, which he offered with great friendliness to
+Balthazar, so as to relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst
+of his grief. Touched by this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he
+thought, praise his goodness and his personal qualities to Marguerite.
+In this he was mistaken. Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was
+a very natural action, and their sorrow was too absorbing to let them
+even think of the lawyer.
+
+Balthazar’s despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed
+to blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,--less
+on account of the Science which might have excused him, than for
+the remorse which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by
+appearances: it takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic
+worth of the article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species
+of enjoyment, which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its
+thirst for emotions it acquits without judging the man who raises a
+laugh, or he who makes it weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+
+Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority with
+docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of her skin,
+just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the gentleness
+and patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs of feminine
+courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels appointed to shed
+peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving palms. But although
+she trained herself, through a premature perception of duty, to hide her
+personal grief, it was none the less bitter; her calm exterior was not
+in keeping with the deep trouble of her thoughts, and she was destined
+to undergo, too early in life, those terrible outbursts of feeling
+which no heart is wholly able to subdue: her father was to hold her
+incessantly under the pressure of natural youthful generosity on the one
+hand, and the dictates of imperious duty on the other. The cares which
+came upon her the very day of her mother’s death threw her into a
+struggle with the interests of life at an age when young girls are
+thinking only of its pleasures. Dreadful discipline of suffering, which
+is never lacking to angelic natures!
+
+The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few days
+after Madame Claes’s death he took occasion to speak to Marguerite, and
+began operations with a cleverness which might have succeeded if
+love had not given her the power of clear insight and saved her from
+mistaking appearances that were all the more specious because Pierquin
+displayed his natural kindheartedness,--the kindliness of a notary who
+thinks himself loving while he protects a client’s money. Relying on
+his rather distant relationship and his constant habit of managing the
+business and sharing the secrets of the Claes family, sure of the
+esteem and friendship of the father, greatly assisted by the careless
+inattention of that servant of science who took no thought for the
+marriage of his daughter, and not suspecting that Marguerite could
+prefer another,--Pierquin unguardedly enabled her to form a judgment
+on a suit in which there was no passion except that of self-interest,
+always odious to a young soul, and which he was not clever enough to
+conceal. It was he who on this occasion was naively above-board, it was
+she who dissimulated,--simply because he thought he was dealing with a
+defenceless girl, and wholly misconceived the privileges of weakness.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking about
+the paths of the little garden, “you know my heart, you understand how
+truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which absorb you at this
+moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart
+only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I
+would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I
+suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant
+with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much
+about you during the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal
+delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister and your own are in
+jeopardy. Do you wish to save your family from complete ruin?”
+
+“What must I do?” she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+
+“Marry,” answered Pierquin.
+
+“I shall not marry,” she said.
+
+“Yes, you will marry,” replied the notary, “when you have soberly
+thought over the critical position in which you are placed.”
+
+“How can my marriage save--”
+
+“Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin,” he exclaimed,
+interrupting her. “Marriage will emancipate you.”
+
+“Why should I be emancipated?” asked Marguerite.
+
+“Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your property,
+my dear little cousin,” said the lawyer in a tone of triumph. “If you
+marry you take your share of your mother’s property. To give it to you,
+the whole property must be liquidated; to do that, it becomes necessary
+to sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the proceeds will be
+capitalized, and your father, as guardian, will be compelled to invest
+the fortune of his children in such a way that Chemistry can’t get hold
+of it.”
+
+“And if I do not marry, what will happen?” she asked.
+
+“Well,” said the notary, “your father will manage your estate as he
+pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the timber
+of the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as the little
+Saint Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred thousand
+francs; but from one day to another you are not sure your father won’t
+cut it down, and then your thirteen hundred acres are not worth three
+hundred thousand francs. Isn’t it better to avoid this almost certain
+danger by at once compelling the division of property on your marriage?
+If the forest is sold now, while Chemistry has gone to sleep, your
+father will put the proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The Funds are at
+59; those dear children will get nearly five thousand francs a year for
+every fifty thousand francs: and, inasmuch as the property of minors
+cannot be sold out, your brothers and sister will find their fortunes
+doubled in value by the time they come of age. Whereas, in the other
+case,--faith, no one knows what may happen: your father has already
+impaired your mother’s property; we shall find out the deficit when we
+come to make the inventory. If he is in debt to her estate, you will
+take a mortgage on his, and in that way something may be recovered--”
+
+“For shame!” said Marguerite. “It would be an outrage on my father.
+It is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have
+forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children,” she
+continued, giving way to tears of distress. “You misunderstand him,
+Monsieur Pierquin.”
+
+“But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry--”
+
+“We are ruined; is that what you mean?”
+
+“Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite,” he said, taking her hand
+which he placed upon his heart, “I should fail of my duty if I did not
+persist in this matter. Your interests alone--”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, “the true
+interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so.”
+
+“Cousin,” he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+escaping him, “you commit suicide; you fling your mother’s property into
+a gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know not
+how I love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball, three
+years ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it speaks
+to you of your own interests, Marguerite.” He paused. “Yes, we must call
+a family council and emancipate you--without consulting you,” he added.
+
+“But what is it to be emancipated?”
+
+“It is to enjoy your own rights.”
+
+“If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+marry? and whom should I marry?”
+
+Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money, that
+Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised tenderness.
+
+“You would marry the person who--pleases you--the most,” he said. “A
+husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business. You are
+now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him all
+alone?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister when
+the time comes.”
+
+“Pshaw! the obstinate creature,” thought Pierquin. “No, you will not
+resist him,” he said aloud.
+
+“Let us end the subject,” she said.
+
+“Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I
+will prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster
+which all the town foresees.”
+
+“I thank you for the interest you take in me,” she answered; “but I
+entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+pain to my father.”
+
+Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring,
+his glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry
+in which Emmanuel’s sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be said,
+or what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose effects
+never deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the passionate
+gestures of a lover may be imitated; a young girl can be deluded by a
+clever comedian; but to succeed, the man must be alone in the field.
+If the young girl has another soul beside her whose pulses vibrate in
+unison with hers, she is able to distinguish the expressions of a true
+love. Emmanuel, like Marguerite, felt the influence of the chords which,
+from the time of their first meeting had gathered ominously about their
+heads, hiding from their eyes the blue skies of love. His feeling for
+the Elect of his heart was an idolatry which the total absence of hope
+rendered gentle and mysterious in its manifestations. Socially too far
+removed from Mademoiselle Claes by his want of fortune, with nothing but
+a noble name to offer her, he saw no chance of ever being her husband.
+Yet he had always hoped for certain encouragements which Marguerite
+refused to give before the failing eyes of her dying mother. Both
+equally pure, they had never said to one another a word of love. Their
+joys were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They trembled apart,
+though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope. They
+seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged
+to the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the
+sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love
+that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed
+in each other’s hearts that both were ready to make the greatest
+sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could
+expect to taste.
+
+Since Madame Claes’s death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
+The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first,
+were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears. Marguerite’s
+reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by
+her mother. With more freedom of action, she nevertheless became more
+distant. Emmanuel shared his beloved’s grief, comprehending that the
+slightest word or wish of love at such a time transgressed the laws
+of the heart. Their love was therefore more concealed than it had ever
+been. These tender souls sounded the same note: held apart by grief, as
+formerly by the timidities of youth and by respect for the sufferings of
+the mother, they clung to the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute
+eloquence of devoted actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine
+harmonies of youth, the first steps of a love still in its infancy.
+Emmanuel came every morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he
+never entered the dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring
+a letter from Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in.
+His first glance at the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic
+thoughts; it told her that he suffered under these conventional
+restraints, that he never left her, he was always with her, he shared
+her grief. He shed the tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear
+one by a look that was marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart
+lived so completely in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness
+which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached
+herself for not generously holding out her hand and saying, “Let us at
+least be friends.”
+
+Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting
+patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the
+multitude when judging of women. He believed that the words marriage,
+freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and
+flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her
+coldness was mere dissimulation. But surround her as he would with
+gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man
+accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families with a high
+hand. He discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to
+his profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving
+behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity. His
+tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped his feigned melancholy at the
+door when he put on his overshoes, or took his umbrella. He used the
+tone his long intimacy authorized as an instrument to work himself still
+further into the bosom of the family, and bring Marguerite to a marriage
+which the whole town was beginning to foresee. The true, devoted,
+respectful love formed a striking contrast to its selfish, calculating
+semblance. Each man’s conduct was homogenous: one feigned a passion and
+seized every advantage to gain the prize; the other hid his love and
+trembled lest he should betray his devotion.
+
+Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the
+same day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom she
+had any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which she
+was condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to those who
+might think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a fine morning
+in April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur Claes was going
+out. The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to Balthazar that he
+spent part of every day in walking about the ramparts. Emmanuel made a
+motion as if to follow him, then he hesitated, seemed to gather up his
+courage, looked at Marguerite and remained. The young girl felt sure
+that he wished to speak with her, and asked him to go into the garden;
+then she sent Felicie to Martha, who was sewing in the antechamber on
+the upper floor, and seated herself on a garden-seat in full view of her
+sister and the old duenna.
+
+“Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by science,”
+ began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed the
+court-yard. “Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man who has
+lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he gazes
+without seeing anything.”
+
+“Every sorrow has its own expression,” said Marguerite, checking her
+tears. “What is it you wish to say to me?” she added after a pause,
+coldly and with dignity.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, “I scarcely
+know if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think only
+of my desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a teacher
+to be interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother Gabriel is over
+fifteen; he is in the second class; it is now necessary to direct his
+studies in the line of whatever future career he may take up. It is for
+your father to decide what that career shall be: if he gives the matter
+no thought, the injury to Gabriel would be serious. But then, again,
+would it not mortify your father if you showed him that he is neglecting
+his son’s interests? Under these circumstances, could you not yourself
+consult Gabriel as to his tastes, and help him to choose a career, so
+that later, if his father should think of making him a public officer,
+an administrator, a soldier, he might be prepared with some special
+training? I do not suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish
+to bring Gabriel up in idleness.”
+
+“Oh, no!” said Marguerite; “when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often
+said we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel ought
+to have a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me, what
+career is best for a man to choose?”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, “Gabriel is
+at the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the
+Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge
+which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can
+choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus,
+without compromising his future, you will have saved a great deal of
+time. Men who leave the Ecole with honors are sought after on all sides;
+the school turns out statesmen, diplomats, men of science, engineers,
+generals, sailors, magistrates, manufacturers, and bankers. There is
+nothing extraordinary in the son of a rich or noble family preparing
+himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on this course I shall ask you
+to--will you grant my request? Say yes!”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Let me be his tutor,” he answered, trembling.
+
+Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and
+said, “Yes”--and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:--
+
+“How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have
+thought for us. I thank you.”
+
+Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not to
+show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to his
+eyes.
+
+“I will bring both boys to see you,” he said, when he was a little
+calmer; “to-morrow is a holiday.”
+
+He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when
+he had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door of
+the dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+
+After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had
+sat that morning.
+
+“My dear cousin,” he said to Balthazar, “I have come to-night to talk
+to you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your
+wife.”
+
+“I keep no account of time,” said Balthazar, wiping away the tears that
+came at the word “decease.”
+
+“Oh, monsieur!” cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, “how can you?”
+
+“But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the limits
+of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you and your
+co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he must
+make an inventory of his property within forty-five days of his wife’s
+decease, so as to render in his accounts at the end of that time. It is
+necessary to know the value of his property before deciding whether to
+accept it as sufficient security, or whether we must fall back on the
+legal rights of minors.”
+
+Marguerite rose.
+
+“Do not go away, my dear cousin,” continued Pierquin; “my words concern
+you--you and your father both. You know how truly I share your grief,
+but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If you do not,
+every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am only doing my
+duty as the family lawyer.”
+
+“He is right,” said Claes.
+
+“The time expires in two days,” resumed Pierquin; “and I must begin the
+inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the legacy-tax
+which the public treasurer will come here and demand. Treasurers have no
+hearts; they don’t trouble themselves about feelings; they fasten their
+claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore for the next two days my clerk
+and I will be here from ten till four with Monsieur Raparlier, the
+public appraiser. After we get through the town property we shall go
+into the country. As for the forest of Waignies, we shall be obliged to
+hold a consultation about that. Now let us turn to another matter.
+We must call a family council and appoint a guardian to protect the
+interests of the minor children. Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your
+nearest relative; but he has now become a Belgian. You ought,” continued
+Pierquin, addressing Balthazar, “to write to him on this matter; you can
+then find out if he has any intention of settling in France, where he
+has a fine property. Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to
+move into French Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making
+up the council with the other near relatives.”
+
+“What is the use of an inventory?” asked Marguerite.
+
+“To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts
+and its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family council,
+acting on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it sees fit.”
+
+“Pierquin,” said Claes, rising from the bench, “do all that is necessary
+to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the distress
+of selling the things that belonged to my dear--” he was unable to
+continue; but he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of such deep
+feeling that Marguerite took her father’s hand and kissed it.
+
+“To-morrow, then,” said Pierquin.
+
+“Come to breakfast,” said Claes; then he seemed to gather his scattered
+senses together and exclaimed: “But in my marriage contract, which was
+drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from the obligation
+of making an inventory, in order that she might not be annoyed by it: it
+is very probable that I was equally released--”
+
+“Oh, what happiness!” cried Marguerite. “It would have been so
+distressing to us.”
+
+“Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow,” said the
+notary, rather confused.
+
+“Then you did not know of this?” said Marguerite.
+
+This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused
+to continue it after the young girl’s comment.
+
+“The devil is in it!” he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+“That man’s wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of
+time,--just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions
+against him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those
+children. I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding
+with old Conyncks, and here’s the end of it! I shall lose ground with
+Marguerite, for she will certainly ask her father why I wanted an
+inventory of the property, which she now sees was not necessary; and
+Claes will tell her that notaries have a passion for writing documents,
+that we are lawyers above all, above cousins or friends or relatives,
+and all such stuff as that.”
+
+He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+themselves by sensitiveness.
+
+Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore, was
+done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the matter
+of property.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis,
+worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the
+necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and
+Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father’s
+country place as a measure of economy. Monsieur Claes attended to his
+business affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a considerable sum of
+money on his property, and went to see the forest at Waignies.
+
+About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him
+a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he
+was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely
+against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he
+forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it.
+Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his
+researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled his
+passion which soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he was
+really bound not to continue his researches, and remembered that his
+wife had refused his oath. Though he had pledged his word to himself
+that he would never pursue the solution of the great Problem, might he
+not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw success? He
+was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant idea contracts a
+certain peevish fixedness which is the first stage of monomania.
+
+Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace
+which Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries
+and scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of
+various countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists themselves,
+towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted to the higher
+sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat, electricity, galvanism,
+magnetism were all different effects of the same cause, and that the
+difference existing between substances hitherto considered simple must
+be produced by varying proportions of an unknown principle. The fear
+that some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals and
+discover the constituent principle of electricity,--two achievements
+which would lead to the solution of the chemical Absolute,--increased
+what the people of Douai called a mania, and drove his desires to a
+paroxysm conceivable to those who devote themselves to the sciences, or
+who have ever known the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion all
+the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite,
+who watched every evidence of her father’s state of mind, opened the
+long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+which her mother’s death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+re-awaking her father’s grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She determined
+to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its distractions.
+Several good marriages were proposed to her, which occupied Claes’s
+mind, but to all of them she replied that she should not marry until
+after she was twenty-five. But in spite of his daughter’s efforts, in
+spite of his remorseful struggles, Balthazar, at the beginning of the
+winter, returned secretly to his researches. It was difficult, however,
+to hide his operations from the inquisitive women in the kitchen; and
+one morning Martha, while dressing Marguerite, said to her:--
+
+“Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier--who
+is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the
+cross--has gone back to the garret. There’s monsieur on the high-road to
+hell. Pray God he mayn’t kill you as he killed my poor mistress.”
+
+“It is not possible!” exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+“Come and see the signs of their traffic.”
+
+Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
+the flue of the laboratory.
+
+“I shall be twenty-one in a few months,” she thought, “and I shall know
+how to oppose the destruction of our property.”
+
+In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
+for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
+happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
+more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in
+his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man
+profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked
+night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know
+how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+
+Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of
+a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
+noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
+necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
+left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went
+to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters
+without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs
+they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss
+him on both cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great domestic
+misfortunes had Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the authority
+of a mother, and if, moreover, she were not protected by a secret love
+from the dangers of so much liberty.
+
+Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+would soon be complete. Balthazar’s rural estates, which yielded sixteen
+thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
+now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
+francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed
+a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
+interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who
+is the slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to
+Marguerite for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated
+that three years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the
+law would step in and eat up all that Balthazar had not squandered.
+Marguerite’s coldness brought Pierquin to a state of almost hostile
+indifference. To give himself an appearance in the eyes of the world of
+having renounced her hand, he frequently remarked of the Claes family in
+a tone of compassion:--
+
+“Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well,
+it can’t be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal means
+which might have rescued them from poverty.”
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in Douai,
+thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits which made
+him worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two young girls,
+who called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as their father had
+gone to bed. Emmanuel’s gentle rap at the street-door was never missing.
+For the last three months, encouraged by the gracious, though mute
+gratitude with which Marguerite now accepted his attentions, he became
+at his ease, and was seen for what he was. The brightness of his pure
+spirit shone like a flawless diamond; Marguerite learned to understand
+its strength and its constancy when she saw how inexhaustible was the
+source from which it came. She loved to watch the unfolding, one by one,
+of the blossoms of his heart, whose perfume she had already breathed.
+Each day Emmanuel realized some one of Marguerite’s hopes, and illumined
+the enchanted regions of love with new lights that chased away the
+clouds and brought to view the serene heavens, giving color to the
+fruitful riches hidden away in the shadow of their lives. More at his
+ease, the young man could display the seductive qualities of his heart
+until now discreetly hidden, the expansive gaiety of his age, the
+simplicity which comes of a life of study, the treasures of a delicate
+mind that life has not adulterated, the innocent joyousness which goes
+so well with loving youth. His soul and Marguerite’s understood each
+other better; they went together to the depths of their hearts and
+found in each the same thoughts,--pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh
+harmonies like those the legends tell of beneath the waves, which
+fascinate the divers. They made themselves known to one another by an
+interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs,
+in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but
+not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the
+sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of anguish
+and renunciation on which she had entered. This artless, progressive
+love was her support. In all his testimonies of affection Emmanuel
+showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet yet subtile mind
+which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of a diamond
+relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,--adorable
+wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the
+artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with
+novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it
+is an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to
+a woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her heart and yet
+not blight it. The more Emmanuel was free to utter himself, the more
+charming were the expressions of his love.
+
+“I have tried to get here before Pierquin,” he said to Marguerite one
+evening. “He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it from
+me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at Waignies
+to speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are already
+felled, and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three
+hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price,
+which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off
+his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand
+francs of the three hundred thousand still due to him on the
+purchase-money.”
+
+Pierquin entered at this moment.
+
+“Ah! my dear cousin,” he said, “you are ruined. I told you how it
+would be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an insatiable
+appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your family
+guardian, Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam, and Claes
+has seized the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all wrong. I have
+written to Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too late; everything
+will be squandered. You will be obliged to sue your father. The suit
+can’t be long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur Conyncks has no
+alternative but to institute proceedings; the law requires it. This
+is the result of your obstinacy. Do you now see my prudence, and how
+devoted I was to your interests?”
+
+“I bring you some good news, mademoiselle,” said young de Solis in his
+gentle voice. “Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. The
+difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed.”
+
+Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:--
+
+“My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+Gabriel’s outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard,” she
+added, kissing her sister’s forehead.
+
+“To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days,” said
+Emmanuel; “he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November.”
+
+“My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing,” said the lawyer, eyeing
+the professor from head to foot; “for he will have to make his own way.
+But, my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of the
+family: will you listen to what I say this time?”
+
+“No,” she said, “not if it relates to marriage.”
+
+“Then what will you do?”
+
+“I?--nothing.”
+
+“But you are of age.”
+
+“I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me,” she
+added, “which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+father and to the honor of the family?”
+
+“My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+does, I will call again.”
+
+“Adieu, monsieur,” said Marguerite.
+
+“The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself,” thought the notary.
+“Adieu, mademoiselle,” he said aloud. “Monsieur, my respects to you”;
+and he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+
+“I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have
+consulted an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle,” said
+Emmanuel, in a hesitating voice. “If you will allow me, I will go
+to Amsterdam to-morrow and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear
+Marguerite--”
+
+He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile and
+a tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He paused,
+looking at Felicie and Martha.
+
+“Speak before my sister,” said Marguerite. “She is so docile and
+courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned
+to our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see
+for herself how necessary courage is to us.”
+
+The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew some
+pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+
+“Leave us, Martha.”
+
+“Dear Marguerite,” said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of
+his voice, “I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers
+who still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled
+timber. To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name
+of Monsieur Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an
+injunction upon them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will have
+returned, the family council can be called together, and Gabriel put
+in possession of his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and your
+brother being thus authorized to use those rights, you will demand your
+share in the proceeds of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot refuse you
+the two hundred thousand francs on which the injunction will have been
+put; as to the remaining hundred thousand which is due to you, you
+must obtain a mortgage on this house. Monsieur Conyncks will demand
+securities for the three hundred thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean.
+Under these circumstances your father will be obliged to mortgage his
+property on the plain of Orchies, which he has already encumbered to the
+amount of three hundred thousand francs. The law gives a retrospective
+priority to the claims of minors; and that will save you. Monsieur
+Claes’s hands will be tied for the future; your property becomes
+inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his own estates because they
+will be held as security for other sums. Moreover, the whole can be
+done quietly, without scandal or legal proceedings. Your father will be
+forced to greater prudence in making his researches, even if he cannot
+be persuaded to relinquish them altogether.”
+
+“Yes,” said Marguerite, “but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain a
+mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live
+here. The proceeds of my father’s property in the country will pay the
+interest on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but how
+are we to live?”
+
+“In the first place,” said Emmanuel, “by investing the fifty thousand
+francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get,
+according to present rates, more than four thousand francs’ income,
+which will suffice to pay your brother’s board and lodging and all his
+other expenses in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is of
+age, therefore you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it, and
+you will have one expense the less. Besides, you will have your own
+fifty thousand.”
+
+“My father will ask me for them,” she said in a frightened tone; “and I
+shall not be able to refuse him.”
+
+“Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing yourself.
+Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel’s name: it will bring you
+twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who are emancipated
+cannot sell property without permission of the family council; you will
+thus gain three years’ peace of mind. By that time your father will
+either have solved his problem or renounced it; and Gabriel, then of
+age, will reinvest the money in your own name.”
+
+Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which she
+did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see this
+pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought with him
+to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of
+minors; she quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural
+penetration of women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+
+Gabriel came home to his father’s house on the following day. When
+Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his admission
+to the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor with a wave
+of his hand, and said:--
+
+“I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science.”
+
+“Oh, my brother,” cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+laboratory, “work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass your
+time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits which
+ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly three
+thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for your
+pocket-money; that is surely enough.”
+
+“I will answer for him,” said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on his
+pupil’s shoulder.
+
+A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite,
+had obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely
+proposed by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to
+face with the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense
+of honor allowed no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the
+timber to which he had consented at a moment when he was harassed by
+creditors, submitted to all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair the
+almost involuntary wrong that he had done to his children, he signed the
+deeds in a preoccupied way. He was now as careless and improvident as a
+Negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop of brandy, and cries
+for her at night. He gave no thought to even the immediate future, and
+never asked himself what resources he would have when his last ducat was
+melted up. He pursued his work and continued his purchases, apparently
+unaware that he was now no more than the titular owner of his house and
+lands, and that he could not, thanks to the severity of the laws, raise
+another penny upon a property of which he was now, as it were, the legal
+guardian.
+
+The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters
+paid the costs of Jean’s education and met all the expenses of the
+household out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum placed
+in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel’s name, which he punctually remitted to
+them. Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in December of that
+year.
+
+Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house,
+and all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and
+forks that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and
+these she now ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day
+Marguerite had kept silence towards her father on the subject of his
+depredations, but that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to
+leave her alone with him, and when he seated himself as usual by the
+corner of the parlor fireplace, she said:--
+
+“My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything,
+even your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I am
+forced to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely enough
+to live on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night and day to
+pay for the schooling of little Jean with the price of the lace dress
+we are now making. My dear father, I implore you to give up your
+researches.”
+
+“You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished;
+I shall have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved
+undiscoverable. You will have millions--”
+
+“Give us meanwhile the bread to eat,” replied Marguerite.
+
+“Bread? is there no bread here?” said Claes, with a frightened air. “No
+bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?”
+
+“You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been
+cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies,
+the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have
+borrowed--”
+
+“Then what are we living on?” he demanded.
+
+Marguerite held up her needle and continued:--
+
+“Gabriel’s income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both ends
+meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that
+I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think
+I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for
+potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me.”
+
+“My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders.”
+
+“It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
+everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain
+from making debts.”
+
+“I don’t wish to make any more!” he said.
+
+“Any more?” she cried, “then you have some?”
+
+“Mere trifles,” he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+
+For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
+lowering of her father’s character, and suffered from it so much that
+she dared not question him.
+
+A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
+the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
+amount, falling due in consecutive months.
+
+“All is over!” cried Marguerite, “the time has come.”
+
+She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+steps, talking to herself:--
+
+“A hundred thousand francs!” she cried. “I must find them, or see my
+father in prison. What am I to do?”
+
+Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
+the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
+brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
+here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
+products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
+pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
+and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
+upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure
+of Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a
+workman, his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered
+it. His eyes were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough.
+The receiver of this instrument was covered with a lens made of
+double convex glasses, the space between the glasses being filled
+with alchohol, which focussed the light coming through one of the
+compartments of the rose-window of the garret. The shelf of the receiver
+communicated with the wire of an immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier,
+busy at the moment in moving the pedestal of the machine, which was
+placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens in a perpendicular
+direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his face black with
+dust, and called out,--
+
+“Ha! mademoiselle, don’t come in.”
+
+The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument,
+and receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads
+of silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
+strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
+of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring,
+all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,--
+
+“He is mad!”
+
+Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, “Send away
+Lemulquinier.”
+
+“No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
+has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
+for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
+complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
+At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
+about to show results which I alone--”
+
+“My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
+paying your notes of hand--”
+
+“Wait, wait!”
+
+“Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
+francs by four o’clock.”
+
+“Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
+this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I
+could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful.”
+
+He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
+rolled from his eyes.
+
+“Monsieur is quite right,” said Lemulquinier; “it is all the fault of
+that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!”
+
+Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+
+“Leave us, Mulquinier,” she said.
+
+“Ah! I see a new experiment!” cried Claes.
+
+“Father, lay aside your experiments,” said his daughter, when they were
+alone. “You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not
+a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will
+become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs
+and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow
+it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful
+to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our
+position; see reason at last!”
+
+“Madness!” cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his
+luminous eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and
+repeated the word “Madness!” so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+
+“Ah!” he cried, “your mother would never have uttered that word to me.
+She was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned
+a science to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human
+race; she knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The
+feelings of a loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial
+affection. Yes, Love is above all other feelings. See reason!” he went
+on, striking his breast. “Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say
+we are poor; well, my daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your father,
+obey me. I will make you rich when I please. Your fortune? it is a
+pittance! When I find the solvent of carbon I will fill your parlor
+with diamonds, and they are but a scintilla of what I seek. You can well
+afford to wait while I consume my life in superhuman efforts.”
+
+“Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you have
+already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of
+my mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him,
+doubtless, as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to him,
+as she sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving myself
+wholly to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling you to
+render an account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past and
+think of the present. I am here now to represent the necessity which you
+have created for yourself. You must have money to meet your notes--do
+you understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but the portrait
+of your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of my mother, who
+felt herself too feeble to defend her children against their father;
+she ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my brothers and my
+sister; I come, father, in the name of all the Claes, and I command
+you to give up your experiments, or earn the means of pursuing them
+hereafter, if pursue them you must. If you arm yourself with the power
+of your paternity, which you employ only for our destruction, I have on
+my side your ancestors and your honor, whose voice is louder than that
+of chemistry. The Family is greater than Science. I have been too long
+your daughter.”
+
+“And you choose to be my executioner,” he said, in a feeble voice.
+
+Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
+she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother’s voice
+saying to her, “Do not oppose your father too much; love him well.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+“Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder,” said
+Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. “We were
+just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap
+of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he’s almost in the shoes
+of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT,” he said to Josette,
+clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, “of getting hold of the
+Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about
+notes of hand.”
+
+“Well, pay them yourself,” said Martha, “out of your wages.”
+
+“Where’s the butter for my bread?” said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+
+“Where’s the money to buy it?” she answered, sharply. “Come, old
+villain, if you make gold in that devil’s kitchen of yours, why don’t
+you make butter? ‘Twouldn’t be half so difficult, and you could sell it
+in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The
+young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to
+be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won’t spend more than one
+hundred francs a month for the whole household. There’s only one dinner
+for all. If you want dainties you’ve got your furnaces upstairs where
+you fricassee pearls till there’s nothing else talked of in town. Get
+your roast chickens up there.”
+
+Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+
+“He will go and buy something to eat with his own money,” said Martha;
+“all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn’t he stingy, the old
+scarecrow!”
+
+“Starve him! that’s the only way to manage him,” said Josette. “For a
+week past he hasn’t rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
+he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the
+present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on
+them, I can tell him that.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Martha, “I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
+wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking
+a Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he’d be burned
+alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa.”
+
+Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
+gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother’s letter, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+
+Josephine.
+
+
+To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
+uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
+entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
+children should present the paper.
+
+“Martha,” cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; “go to
+Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble, discreet
+heart! he never told me,” she thought; “though all my griefs and cares
+are his, he never told me!”
+
+Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+
+“You have kept a secret from me,” she said, showing him her mother’s
+letter.
+
+Emmanuel bent his head.
+
+“Marguerite, are you in great trouble?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” she answered; “be my support,--you, whom my mother calls ‘our
+good Emmanuel.’” She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
+knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+
+“My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
+saw you in the gallery,” he said; “but I scarcely dared to hope the time
+might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know
+my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your
+mother’s wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.”
+
+“You have saved us,” she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
+go down to the parlor.
+
+After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
+found themselves.
+
+“I must pay those notes at once,” said Emmanuel. “If Merkstus holds them
+all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
+seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
+ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.”
+
+“Oh!” she said, “bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
+asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me.
+Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!” she said, weeping
+and resting her forehead against the young man’s heart.
+
+This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
+protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
+melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full,
+was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+
+“What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live in
+that garret, where the air is stifling.”
+
+“What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
+‘My kingdom for a horse’?” said Emmanuel. “He is pitiless; and in that
+you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
+fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours
+nor his.”
+
+“Give him my fortune?” she said, pressing her lover’s hand and looking
+at him with ardor in her eyes; “you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told a
+hundred lies to make me keep it!”
+
+“Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,” he said. “Sometimes I long for
+you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
+you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+grandeurs of wealth can separate us.”
+
+“Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.”
+
+“Ourselves!” he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+“The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.”
+
+“It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head.
+To reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
+consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he
+has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
+the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
+fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?”
+
+“Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
+for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
+you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
+ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
+nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.”
+
+“My poor mother is happy,” said Marguerite; “she would have suffered
+a thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.”
+
+“There is an end,” said Emmanuel. “When you have nothing left, Monsieur
+Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.”
+
+“Let him stop now, then,” cried Marguerite, “for we are without a
+penny!”
+
+Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes’s notes and returned, bringing
+them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
+moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
+noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father,
+reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard,
+then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his
+daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
+
+“My child,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+tenderness, “forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
+wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
+wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold,” he went
+on, pointing to the martyr’s portrait. “He died for Liberty, I die for
+Science; he is venerated, I am hated.”
+
+“Hated? oh, my father, no,” she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
+“we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?” she said, turning to her sister
+who came in at the moment.
+
+“What is the matter, dear father?” said his youngest daughter, taking
+his hand.
+
+“I have ruined you.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Felicie, “but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+always at the head of his class.”
+
+“See, father,” said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
+way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock,
+“here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing
+left to pay them with--”
+
+“Then you have money?” whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
+from his surprise.
+
+His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
+joy and hope in her father’s face as he looked about him to discover the
+gold.
+
+“Father,” she said, “I have my own fortune.”
+
+“Give it to me,” he said with a rapacious gesture; “I will return you a
+hundred-fold.”
+
+“Yes, I will give it to you,” answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+
+“Ah, my dear daughter!” he cried, “you save my life. I have thought of a
+last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I
+do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms,
+my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You
+give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to
+heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you with jewels, with
+wealth.”
+
+He kissed his daughter’s forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
+testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
+obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at
+her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
+mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
+rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his
+attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature old
+age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast
+of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a
+glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
+
+“Well, well,” he said, following her eyes, “in six months we shall fill
+them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
+Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
+beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita,” he said, smiling,
+“thy name is a prophecy. ‘Margarita’ means a pearl. Sterne says so
+somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
+would amuse you.”
+
+“A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease,” she answered; “we have
+suffered enough already.”
+
+“Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
+be rich and all-powerful.”
+
+“Mademoiselle has got such a good heart,” said Lemulquinier, whose
+seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+
+For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
+the natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
+Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic
+fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit,
+which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters
+into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first
+time in many months, the father and the children reunited. The young
+professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the
+scene; for Claes’s manners and conversation had recovered their former
+irresistible seduction!
+
+Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
+More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
+are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget
+all; they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own
+souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of
+all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their
+power to observe and recognize that which goes on around them, they are
+satisfied with having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them
+on, and they frequently make false application of the knowledge they
+have acquired about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their
+social apathy, or they drop from the world of thought to the world of
+life; at such times they come with well-stored memories, and are by no
+means strangers to what is happening.
+
+Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
+brain, knew his daughter’s whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
+history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed
+this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it.
+It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were
+unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,--contrasting
+with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When
+Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light
+and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some
+embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in
+gold, the possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them
+on the work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she
+was mending; and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the
+money. When he returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o’clock struck;
+Martha, who sat up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
+
+“Where can we hide it?” said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
+of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
+disastrous.
+
+“I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow,” said Emmanuel;
+“you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
+looking for them there.”
+
+Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table
+to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry,
+and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and
+the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor
+door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+
+“What are you doing,” he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
+terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
+hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
+sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
+horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
+
+“I could not be mistaken,” said Balthazar, sitting down; “I heard the
+sound of gold.”
+
+He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
+beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking
+of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the
+parlor.
+
+“Thank you, Monsieur de Solis,” said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
+glance which meant, “Come to my rescue and help me to save this money.”
+
+“What gold is this?” resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
+Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+
+“This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
+to me that I may pay our debts honorably,” she answered.
+
+Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
+caught him by the arm.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said, “you must not escape my thanks.”
+
+“Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
+Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,”
+ Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an
+almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+
+“I shall not allow that,” said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
+paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+astonished young people. “How much is it?” His eager passion made him
+more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
+his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+
+“Let us count it,” he said.
+
+“There are six thousand ducats,” said Emmanuel.
+
+“Seventy thousand francs,” remarked Claes.
+
+The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+
+“Monsieur,” he said, “your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
+thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means
+of paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
+hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
+can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
+that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
+denuded land of the forest of Waignies.”
+
+Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel’s purity of soul. Brought
+up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
+young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
+and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
+conscience.
+
+“Adieu, monsieur,” said Balthazar, “I thought you had more confidence in
+a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father.”
+
+After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
+out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+
+The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
+
+“You love me, do you not?”
+
+“Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it.”
+
+She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
+them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed
+him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand
+ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,--
+
+“Marguerite, I must have that money.”
+
+“If you take it, it will be robbery,” she replied coldly. “Hear me,
+father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths
+a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield.”
+
+“Do you mean to kill your father?”
+
+“We avenge our mother,” she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
+Claes died.
+
+“My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
+those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
+problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me,” he cried in accents of
+despair. “Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes,
+I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the word
+of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children are
+sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
+my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
+myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will do
+your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no longer be
+the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my authority. I
+swear by your mother’s memory!” he cried, shedding tears.
+
+Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
+thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+
+“Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!” he cried. “What are
+sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
+will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
+labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I will go
+away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes
+I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
+them.”
+
+Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
+his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
+
+“Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
+myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall
+say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and
+incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands.
+You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as
+the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood.”
+
+“If it were my blood, my life’s blood, I would give it to you,” she
+cried; “but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister?
+No. Cease, cease!” she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her
+father’s caressing hands.
+
+“Sixty thousand francs and two months,” he said, rising in anger; “that
+is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth.
+I curse you!” he went on; “you are no daughter of mine, you are not a
+woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!--Give it
+to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
+forever,”--and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous energy
+towards the gold.
+
+“I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
+us now,” she said, pointing to the picture.
+
+“Try to live, if you can, with your father’s blood upon you,” cried
+Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
+might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
+replied by a negative motion of her head.
+
+“Farewell, my daughter,” he said, gently, “may you live happy!”
+
+When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
+her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness
+of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities
+of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and
+Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to
+her that days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up
+the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter
+his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with
+the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without
+light, without noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father
+with a pistol at his head.
+
+“Take all!” she cried, springing towards him.
+
+She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
+old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
+her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+
+“Enough, father, enough,” she said; “remember your promise. If you do
+not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, mother!” she cried, turning towards Madame Claes’s chamber, “YOU
+would have given him all--would you not?”
+
+“Sleep in peace,” said Balthazar, “you are a good daughter.”
+
+“Sleep!” she said, “the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
+old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother’s heart.”
+
+“Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
+the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
+the truth.”
+
+“I comprehend our ruin,” she said, leaving him.
+
+The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
+spend the day.
+
+“Well?” he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+
+“I yielded,” she replied.
+
+“My dear life,” he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, “if you had
+withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
+adore you!”
+
+“Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?”
+
+“Leave the future to me,” cried the young man, with a radiant look; “we
+love each other, and all is well.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
+and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
+of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
+well-being of the household.
+
+During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
+her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might
+be, she had come to hope in her father’s genius. By an inexplicable
+phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the
+flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said
+to herself, “If my father succeeds, we shall be happy.” Claes and
+Lemulquinier alone said: “We shall succeed.” Unhappily, from day to day
+the Searcher’s face grew sadder. Sometimes, when he came to dinner he
+dared not look at his daughter; at other times he glanced at her in
+triumph. Marguerite employed her evenings in making young de Solis
+explain to her many legal points and difficulties. At last her masculine
+education was completed; she was evidently preparing herself to execute
+the plan she had resolved upon if her father were again vanquished in
+his duel with the Unknown (X).
+
+About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound
+now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife’s chamber; he shuddered,
+no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his
+movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science.
+Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while before
+dinner.
+
+“You have not succeeded, father?”
+
+“No, my child.”
+
+“Ah!” said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. “I will not say one word of
+reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of
+your promise; it is surely sacred to you--you are a Claes. Your children
+will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now belong to
+me; you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be gentle,
+and I will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I am going
+to leave you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs; for,” she
+said, kissing him on his brow, “you are now my child. I take Martha with
+me; to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor child is
+only seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you; therefore be
+generous, do not ask her for money; she has only enough for the barest
+necessaries of the household. Take courage: renounce your labors and
+your thoughts for three or four years. The great problem may ripen
+towards discovery; by that time I shall have gathered the money that
+is necessary to solve it,--and you will solve it. Tell me, father, your
+queen is clement, is she not?”
+
+“Then all is not lost?” said the old man.
+
+“No, not if you keep your word.”
+
+“I will obey you, my daughter,” answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+
+The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his
+great-niece. He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain
+long enough for Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements.
+Monsieur Claes received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously
+sad and humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with
+blunt frankness while they were breakfasting:--
+
+“I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,--a
+ruinous passion, but we all have our manias.”
+
+“Dear uncle!” exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+“The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of
+a Claes is there,” said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, “and here,”
+ striking his heart; “don’t you think so? I count upon you: and for that
+reason, having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use in
+your service.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Balthazar, “I will repay you with treasures--”
+
+“The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,”
+ replied Conyncks, sternly. “Our ancestor has those words engraved upon
+his brow,” he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur Conyncks
+for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a daughter
+twelve years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune. It was not
+impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the good people of
+Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her great-uncle. The
+rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot
+haste to the House of Claes.
+
+Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
+For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
+camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
+latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
+place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
+into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
+were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830,
+was accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the
+one ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of
+functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance,
+to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall
+of the legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
+between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist “cafes” displayed
+an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal “cafes” so brilliantly
+that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the lives of some
+of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand
+such practice. The two societies naturally became exclusive.
+
+Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
+must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when
+he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
+shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
+fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
+think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were
+all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper
+circle by means of some creditable alliance.
+
+The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
+kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the
+old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him
+from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter
+of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social
+vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned
+to his allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary
+sacrifices to conclude a marriage which should realize all his
+ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar and Felicie during
+Marguerite’s absence; but in so doing he discovered, rather late in the
+day, a formidable competitor in Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the
+deceased abbe was thought to be considerable, and to the eyes of a man
+who calculated all the affairs of life in figures, the young heir seemed
+more powerful through his money than through the seductions of the
+heart--as to which Pierquin never made himself uneasy. In his mind the
+abbe’s fortune restored the de Solis name to all its pristine value.
+Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs which reflected lustre on one
+another and doubled the illumination.
+
+The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin’s spirit of emulation. He
+tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
+expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
+airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared
+himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let
+her know that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who
+received for the first time in her life the compliments of a man,
+listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive; she took
+emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix the vague
+emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind.
+Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving attentions
+with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless wished to be,
+like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of a man.
+
+Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
+over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in
+his attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
+intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps
+in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon,
+little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind
+Emmanuel’s back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a
+meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes.
+Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the
+secret of Marguerite’s journey, and to know if it were really a
+question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but,
+notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither
+Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good reason
+that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins
+of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as to her
+projects.
+
+The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
+difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
+making him play backgammon, the chemist’s mind was never present; during
+most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid.
+Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes,
+a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the
+burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of
+genius, gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic
+spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even
+Pierquin could not enter without respect the presence of that caged
+lion, whose eyes, full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded
+from excess of light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the
+mouth dared not utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered
+face, whose fires revived at the conception of a new experiment; then,
+as he looked about the parlor, Balthazar’s eyes would fasten on the spot
+where his wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand
+across the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense,
+and his head fell forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the
+world, and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
+
+This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man the
+necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the convictions
+of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes and Marguerite
+had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly checked the
+impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in efforts at
+consolation which still further embittered the anguish of the doomed
+Titan.
+
+Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in her
+departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either to him
+or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her he seemed
+annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against him? Was he
+humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of paternity to his
+own child? Had he come to love her less because she was now the father,
+he the child? Perhaps there were many of these reasons, many of these
+inexpressible feelings which float like vapors through the soul, in the
+mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite. However great may be the
+great men of earth, be they known or unknown, fortunate or unfortunate
+in their endeavors, all have likenesses which belong to human nature.
+By a double misfortune they suffer through their greatness not less than
+through their defects; and perhaps Balthazar needed to grow accustomed
+to the pangs of wounded vanity. The life he was leading, the evenings
+when these four persons met together in Marguerite’s absence, were full
+of sadness and vague, uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like
+a parched-up soil; where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few
+rare consolations, though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the
+strength of the family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+
+Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the
+return of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her
+uncle who remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no
+doubt to lend the weight of his authority to some coup d’etat planned
+by his niece. Marguerite’s return was made a family fete. Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar. When
+the travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went to meet
+it with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see her home
+once more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the court-yard
+to reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored like a guilty
+wife who is unable to dissimulate; but her face recovered its serenity
+as she looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed to gather strength to
+complete a work she had secretly undertaken.
+
+Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the dinner,
+father and daughter watched each other with distrust and curiosity.
+Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in Paris,
+doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis imitated
+his reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family secrets,
+said to Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of
+liveliness:--
+
+“Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres--”
+
+“I have seen little of Paris,” she said; “I did not go there for
+amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai once
+more.”
+
+“Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+Opera; and even there she was uneasy,” said Monsieur Conyncks.
+
+It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite
+and Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the
+rest. As the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew
+more and more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but
+her motions, her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen anxiety.
+Messieurs Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of the secret
+feelings which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared to encourage
+her by expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept from a
+knowledge of the steps that had been taken on his behalf, withdrew
+little by little from his children and friends, and pointedly kept
+silence. Marguerite would no doubt soon disclose what she had decided
+upon for his future.
+
+To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age
+a man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and more
+thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he would be
+forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of those crises
+in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by imagery. The
+thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were laughing in the
+fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was coming, but they held
+up their heads and continued on their way. Monsieur Conyncks was the
+first to leave the room, conducted by Balthazar to his chamber.
+During the latter’s absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis went away.
+Marguerite bade the notary good-night with much affection; she said
+nothing to Emmanuel, but she pressed his hand and gave him a tearful
+glance. She sent Felicie away, and when Claes returned to the parlor he
+found his daughter alone.
+
+“My kind father,” she said in a trembling voice, “nothing could have
+made me leave home but the serious position in which we found
+ourselves; but now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest
+difficulties, I return with some chances of deliverance for all of us.
+Thanks to your name, and to my uncle’s influence, and to the support
+of Monsieur de Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under
+government as receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth, they
+say, eighteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has given
+bonds as your security. Here is the nomination,” she added, drawing
+a paper from her bag. “Your life in Douai, in this house, during the
+coming years of privation and sacrifice would be intolerable to you. Our
+father must be placed in a situation at least equal to that in which he
+has always lived. I ask nothing from the salary you will receive from
+this appointment; employ it as you see fit. I will only beg you to
+remember that we have not a penny of income, and that we must live on
+what Gabriel can give us out of his. The town shall know nothing of
+our inner life. If you were still to live in this house you would be
+an obstacle to the means my sister and I are about to employ to restore
+comfort and ease to the home. Have I abused the authority you gave me by
+putting you in a position to remake your own fortune? In a few years, if
+you so will, you can easily become the receiver-general.”
+
+“In other words, Marguerite,” said Balthazar, gently, “you turn me out
+of my own house.”
+
+“I do not deserve that bitter reproach,” replied the daughter, quelling
+the tumultuous beatings of her heart. “You will come back to us in a
+manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your promise.
+You are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he might himself
+accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone.”
+
+“I shall not go,” said Balthazar, rising; “I need no help from any one
+to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children.”
+
+“It would be better, certainly,” replied Marguerite, calmly. “But now I
+ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in
+a few words. If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so
+that you may remain its master.”
+
+“Marguerite!” cried Balthazar.
+
+“In that case,” she said, continuing her words without taking notice of
+her father’s anger, “it will be necessary to notify the minister of your
+refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post,
+which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but
+for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a
+lady.”
+
+“My children leave me!” he exclaimed.
+
+“You must leave us or we must leave you,” she said. “If I were your only
+child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate;
+but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and
+despair. I promised it to her who died there,” she said, pointing to
+the place where her mother’s bed had stood. “We have hidden our troubles
+from you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone. My father,
+we are not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it.
+Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be
+incessantly brought to nought by the caprices of a passion.”
+
+“My dear children,” cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite’s hand, “I will
+help you, I will work, I--”
+
+“Here is the means,” she answered, showing him the official letter.
+
+“But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose
+the fruits of ten years’ work, and the enormous sums of money which my
+laboratory represents. There,” he said, pointing towards the garret,
+“are our real resources.”
+
+Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--
+
+“Father, you must choose.”
+
+“Ah! my daughter, you are very hard,” he replied, sitting down in an
+armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+
+The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple announcement
+turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old
+valet remarked hastily:--
+
+“Don’t be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at
+eleven o’clock to breakfast. He didn’t go to bed all night. At two in
+the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the
+window at the laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him; he
+wept; he is in trouble. Here’s the famous month of July when the sun is
+able to enrich us all, and if you only would--”
+
+“Enough,” said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed
+her father’s mind.
+
+A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the
+places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his
+laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to
+him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to whom
+the public holidays are so much lost time. Here were his hopes; here the
+heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe
+the breath of life. This alliance of places and things with men, which
+is so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of
+science and students. To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce
+Science, to abandon the Problem,--it was death.
+
+Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in
+which her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the
+parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+
+At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite
+studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of
+stormy grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him
+good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her
+to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,--
+
+“I have been to get my passport.”
+
+The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed
+the poor girl’s heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears,
+and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at
+her ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man
+who had come to a decision.
+
+“So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle,” he said to Monsieur Conyncks.
+“I have always wished to go there.”
+
+“It is a place where one can live cheaply,” replied the old man.
+
+“Is our father going away?” cried Felicie.
+
+Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+
+“You must leave him with me to-day,” said Balthazar, putting his son
+beside him. “I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye.”
+
+Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
+gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
+both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile.
+All instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
+declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
+Balthazar’s age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm;
+he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the tyrannous
+power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening was over, and
+father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day
+had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the first years of his
+fatherhood, held out his hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness
+that was mingled with despair,--
+
+“Are you satisfied with your father?”
+
+“You are worthy of HIM,” said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
+Van Claes.
+
+The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to
+the laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
+cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
+him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
+garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the
+various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded; each
+was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly ordered
+Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids, and to
+separate all substances which might produce explosions. While taking
+these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those uttered by
+a condemned man before going to the scaffold.
+
+“Here,” he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
+a voltaic pile were dipped, “is an experiment whose results ought to be
+watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have driven
+from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their feet. In a
+combination of carbon and sulphur,” he went on, speaking to himself,
+“carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--”
+
+“Ah! is that how it would be?” said Lemulquinier, contemplating his
+master with admiration.
+
+“Now here,” continued Balthazar, after a pause, “the combination is
+subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act--”
+
+“If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force.”
+
+“No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the
+conditions of crystallization--”
+
+“Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization,” cried the old
+valet impatiently.
+
+“If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will crystallize,”
+ said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of indistinct thoughts
+which were parts of a complete conception in his own mind; “but if the
+battery works under certain conditions of which I am ignorant--it must
+be watched carefully--it is quite possible that--Ah! what am I thinking
+of? It is no longer a question of chemistry, my friend; we are to keep
+accounts in Bretagne.”
+
+Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur
+de Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science had
+imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the carriage
+with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the threshold.
+There, as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with a despairing
+pressure, he whispered in her ear, “You are a good girl; I bear you no
+ill-will”; then she darted through the court-yard into the parlor, and
+flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her mother had died, and
+prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish the hard task that lay
+before her. She was already strengthened by an inward voice, sounding in
+her heart the encouragement of angels and the gratitude of her mother,
+when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel, and Pierquin came in, after
+watching the carriage until it disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+“And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!” said Pierquin.
+
+“Save the family,” she answered simply. “We own nearly thirteen hundred
+acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into three farms,
+put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I believe that in a
+few years, with patience and great economy, each of us,” motioning to
+her sister and brother, “will have a farm of over four-hundred acres,
+which may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly fifteen thousand
+francs. My brother Gabriel will have this house, and all that now stands
+in his name on the Grand-Livre, for his portion. We shall then be able
+to redeem our father’s property and return it to him free from all
+encumbrance, by devoting our incomes, each of us, to paying off his
+debts.”
+
+“But, my dear cousin,” said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite’s
+understanding of business and her cool judgment, “you will need at least
+two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your houses, and
+purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?”
+
+“That is where my difficulties begin,” she said, looking alternately at
+Pierquin and de Solis; “I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has already
+spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father’s security.”
+
+“You have friends!” cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+demoiselles Claes were “four-hundred-thousand-franc girls,” after all.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin, unfortunately
+for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of his enthusiasm,
+and he promptly added,--
+
+“I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs.”
+
+Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to
+find her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at her
+sister, who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the
+poor girl had allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin’s meaningless
+gallantries.
+
+“You shall only pay me five per cent interest,” went on the lawyer,
+“and refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take a
+mortgage on your property. And don’t be uneasy; you shall only have the
+outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy farmers,
+and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like a good
+relation.”
+
+Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too
+much occupied in studying the changes of her sister’s face to perceive
+it. After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused smile,
+and answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de Solis:--
+
+“You are indeed a good relation,--I expected nothing less of you; but an
+interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall wait
+till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has in the
+Funds.”
+
+Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+
+“Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+you,” said Marguerite to her sister. “Jean, my angel, be a good boy;
+don’t tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as
+many new ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard.”
+
+Felicie carried off her brother.
+
+“Cousin,” said Marguerite to Pierquin, “and you, monsieur,” she said
+to Monsieur de Solis, “I know you have been to see my father during my
+absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let us
+understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both with
+the greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with Josette
+and Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one, not even
+an old friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the circumstances
+in which we are placed, our conduct must be irreproachable. We are vowed
+to toil and solitude for a long, long time.”
+
+There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in contemplation
+of Marguerite’s head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know what to say. He
+took leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against himself; for
+he suddenly perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and that he,
+Pierquin, had just behaved like a fool.
+
+“Pierquin, my friend,” he said, apostrophizing himself in the street,
+“if a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool
+I am! I’ve got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business,
+without counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets, which
+is likely to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is so
+economical), and I’ve had the madness to ask interest from Mademoiselle
+Claes! I know those two are jeering at me now! I mustn’t think of
+Marguerite any more. No. After all, Felicie is a sweet, gentle little
+creature, who will suit me much better. Marguerite’s character is iron;
+she would want to rule me--and--she would rule me. Come, come, let’s be
+generous; I wish I was not so much of a lawyer: am I never to get that
+harness off my back? Bless my soul! I’ll begin to fall in love with
+Felicie, and I won’t budge from that sentiment. She will have a farm
+of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner or later, will be worth
+twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for the soil about Waignies
+is excellent. Just let my old uncle des Racquets die, poor dear man,
+and I’ll sell my practice and be a man of leisure, with
+fifty--thou--sand--francs--a--year. My wife is a Claes, I’m allied
+to the great families. The deuce! we’ll see if those Courtevilles and
+Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come and dine with a
+Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of Douai; I’ll obtain the
+cross, and get to be deputy--in short, everything. Ha, ha! Pierquin, my
+boy, now keep yourself in hand; no more nonsense, because--yes, on my
+word of honor--Felicie--Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes--loves you!”
+
+When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to
+Marguerite, who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They rose
+with one impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but as
+they reached the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist his
+joy, and, in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said,--
+
+“I have three hundred thousand francs of yours.”
+
+“What!” she cried, “did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then
+where did you get them?”
+
+“Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who first
+said the word ‘ourselves’?”
+
+“Dear Emmanuel!” she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held hers;
+and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself into a low
+chair.
+
+“It is for me to thank you,” he said, with the voice of love, “since you
+accept all.”
+
+“Oh, my dear beloved one,” she cried, “this moment effaces many a grief
+and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,” she
+continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, “I know the way to
+make it mine.”
+
+She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to witness.
+The young man’s eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did not notice
+that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the words:--
+
+“From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father’s
+indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself,” she said, holding
+out the ring. “Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you--she would have
+chosen you.”
+
+The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside her,
+offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+
+“This is my mother’s wedding-ring,” he said, kissing it. “My Marguerite,
+am I to have no other pledge than this?”
+
+She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+
+“Alas, dear love,” she said, greatly agitated, “are we not doing wrong?
+We have so long to wait!”
+
+“My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of
+patience,--he spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you;
+I have long mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as
+I am His.”
+
+They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm.
+It was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an
+overflowing spring, poured forth its superabundance in little wavelets.
+The events which separated these lovers produced a melancholy which only
+made their happiness the keener, giving it a sense of something sharp,
+like pain.
+
+Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact
+of love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,--exchanging
+a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this discretion cost
+him, how hungry his soul was for that happiness so long desired, which
+had just been consecrated by the betrothal of their hearts.
+
+“Come here, little sister,” said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their words
+of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their projects. In
+spite of her sister’s joyous tone and lively manner, Felicie experienced
+a sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite took her hand and felt
+it tremble.
+
+“Mademoiselle Felicie,” said the elder, with her lips at her sister’s
+ear. “I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence, and
+he has said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them.” Felicie
+blushed. “Don’t defend yourself, my angel,” continued Marguerite, “it
+is so natural to love! Perhaps your dear nature will improve his; he is
+egotistical and self-interested, but for all that he is a good man, and
+his defects may even add to your happiness. He will love you as the best
+of his possessions; you will be a part of his business affairs. Forgive
+me this one word, dear love; you will soon correct the bad habit he has
+acquired of seeing money in everything, by teaching him the business of
+the heart.”
+
+Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+
+“Besides,” added Marguerite, “he has property; and his family belongs
+to the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don’t think I would
+oppose your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do
+you?”
+
+Felicie let fall the words, “Dear sister.”
+
+“Yes, you may confide in me,” cried Marguerite, “sisters can surely tell
+each other their secrets.”
+
+These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When Marguerite,
+expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie’s
+heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--
+
+“Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--”
+
+“Ah!” cried Felicie, laughing, “leave me to my own devices; I have a
+model before my eyes.”
+
+“Saucy child!” exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+
+Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
+accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
+and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
+both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the
+two were, to use his own expression, “romantic and sentimental girls,”
+ adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
+Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
+no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream;
+and accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took
+her mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk
+sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of the primal contract which,
+according to social usage, must precede the notarial contract.
+
+“Dear cousin,” he said, “you and I have not always been of one mind as
+to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
+you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
+desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
+fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
+me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
+have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
+that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
+successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
+that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
+brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
+take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
+service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at one
+quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I
+ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
+good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
+wife happy.”
+
+“This is all satisfactory, cousin,” answered Marguerite; “but my
+sister’s choice depends upon herself and also on my father’s will.”
+
+“I know that, my dear cousin,” said the lawyer, “but you are the mother
+of the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that you
+should judge me rightly.”
+
+This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the
+note ran as follows: “Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor of
+the city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT of
+being present, etc.”
+
+Marguerite accepted the lawyer’s offer only so far as it related to his
+professional services, so that she might not in any degree compromise
+either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister’s future, or her
+father’s authority.
+
+The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette (who
+vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and seconded
+all her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where she began
+operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin.
+Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that
+worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he
+had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save
+Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and working the ground
+intended for the farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers,
+who were anxious to settle themselves in life, and he succeeded, through
+the prospect he held out to them of the fertility of the land, in making
+them take leases of the three farms on which the buildings were to be
+constructed. To gain possession of the farms rent-free for three years
+the tenants bound themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year the
+fourth year, twelve thousand the sixth year, and fifteen thousand for
+the remainder of the term; to drain the land, make the plantations, and
+purchase the cattle. While the buildings were being put up the farmers
+were to clear the land.
+
+Four years after Balthazar Claes’s departure from his home Marguerite
+had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two
+hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up
+the farm buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave
+girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town. Marguerite
+superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases
+with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so
+well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment. By the
+fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental
+of the farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her
+brother’s name, and the proceeds of her father’s property, towards
+paying off the mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation
+which her father’s passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes.
+This redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.
+Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred
+thousand francs of his uncle’s bequest, and by joining to it twenty
+thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her
+management a large slice of the debts. This life of courage,
+privation, and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went
+well,--everything prospered under the administration and influence of
+Marguerite Claes.
+
+Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in
+the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his
+great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he
+succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her
+father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole
+Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired
+its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand
+of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.
+
+At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left
+Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired
+by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his
+family and crown their happiness by his presence. Marguerite had often
+expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had
+formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day
+when her father would return as master of his house. In her absence
+Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare
+a surprise which should make the younger sister a sharer in the
+restoration of the House of Claes. The two bought a number of fine
+pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate the gallery.
+Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing. Wishing to testify to
+Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble conduct and in the
+self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her mother’s dying mandate,
+he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures, among them several of
+those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be brought to Douai
+in Marguerite’s absence, so that the Claes gallery might once more be
+complete.
+
+During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her
+sister or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed;
+but since her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming
+symptoms, the gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony with
+which he lived that he might spend the greater part of his salary in
+experiments the results of which forever disappointed him. Though he was
+only sixty-five years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His eyes were
+sunken in their orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a few hairs
+remained as a fringe around his skull; he allowed his beard to grow, and
+cut it off with scissors when its length annoyed him; he was bent like a
+field-laborer, and the condition of his clothes had reached a degree of
+wretchedness which his decrepitude now rendered hideous. Thought still
+animated that noble face, whose features were scarcely discernible
+under its wrinkles; but the fixity of the eyes, a certain desperation
+of manner, a restless uneasiness, were all diagnostics of insanity, or
+rather of many forms of insanity. Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the
+look of a monomaniac; at other times impatient anger at not seizing a
+secret which flitted before his eyes like a will o’ the wisp brought
+symptoms of madness into his face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter
+betrayed his irrationality: but during the greater part of the time, he
+was sunk in a state of complete depression which combined all the phases
+of insanity in the cold melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and
+imperceptible these symptoms may have been to the eye of strangers, they
+were, unfortunately, only too plain to those who had known Balthazar
+Claes sublime in goodness, noble in heart, stately in person,--a Claes
+of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige now remained.
+
+Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant
+toil, had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+expression of the old valet’s face showed a singular mixture of
+anxiety and admiration for his master which might easily have misled
+an onlooker. Though he listened to Balthazar’s words with respect, and
+followed his every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of
+the servant of science very much as a mother takes care of her child,
+and even seemed to protect him, because in the vulgar details of life,
+to which Balthazar gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These
+old men, wrapped in one idea, confident of the reality of their hope,
+stirred by the same breath, the one representing the shell, the other
+the soul of their mutual existence, formed a spectacle at once tender
+and distressing.
+
+When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living
+at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+possession of his office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native
+town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar’s mind. His daughter’s
+letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning
+his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution
+of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite’s arrival with extreme
+impatience.
+
+The daughter threw herself into her father’s arms and wept for joy. This
+time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the
+exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like
+those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety
+of the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father
+and saw the change which had taken place in him since her last visit.
+Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on
+taking Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence
+of his native place might restore him to health and reason amid the
+happiness of a recovered domestic life.
+
+After the first transports of the heart were over,--which were far
+warmer on Balthazar’s part than Marguerite had expected,--he showed a
+singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+
+Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for
+a time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had
+dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and
+the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and
+childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His
+daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy
+she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from
+him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that
+had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity
+he had long neglected,--all these things affected his mind towards her,
+and increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him
+beside Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and
+seemed to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman
+who rules them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite
+noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child
+detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic
+and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by
+toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips
+and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that
+greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence
+to restore her father’s sense of dignity before the solemn day on which
+he was to reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they
+were alone was to ask him,--
+
+“Do you owe anything here?”
+
+Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:--
+
+“I don’t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+more about my affairs than I do myself.”
+
+Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+
+“What does monsieur want?” asked Lemulquinier.
+
+Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her
+heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some
+mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion
+of his labors.
+
+“My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+without you,” she said.
+
+“Monsieur,” began Lemulquinier, “owes--”
+
+At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+intercepted; it humiliated her.
+
+“Tell me all that my father owes,” she said.
+
+“Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who
+is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and
+lead, and zinc and the reagents--”
+
+“Is that all?” asked Marguerite.
+
+Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a
+spell,--
+
+“Yes, mademoiselle.”
+
+“Very good,” she said, “I will give them to you.”
+
+Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,--
+
+“You are an angel, my child.”
+
+He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad;
+and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the
+signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three
+thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.
+
+“Be frank with me, father,” she said, letting him seat her on his knee;
+“you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without
+an element of fear in the midst of the general joy.”
+
+“My dear Marguerite,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a
+grace that seemed a memory of her youth, “you would scold me--”
+
+“No,” she said.
+
+“Truly?” he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. “Can I
+tell you all? will you pay--”
+
+“Yes,” she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+
+“Well, I owe--oh! I dare not--”
+
+“Tell me, father.”
+
+“It is a great deal.”
+
+She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+
+“I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.”
+
+“Thirty thousand francs,” she said, “is just the sum I have laid by. I
+am glad to give it to you,” she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+
+He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the
+chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:--
+
+“My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the
+Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were about
+to sue me,--me, who would have made their fortune!”
+
+“Father,” said Marguerite in accents of despair, “are you still
+searching?”
+
+“Yes, still searching,” he said, with the smile of a madman, “and I
+shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached--”
+
+“We? who are we?”
+
+“I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he
+is devoted to me.”
+
+Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+should lower himself in her uncle’s eyes. She was frightened at the
+ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for
+the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who
+saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the
+liberation of his fortune.
+
+On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and
+her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy
+over his master such as common men without education are able to obtain
+over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men,
+taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete
+dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case
+the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows
+out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab
+for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of
+this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke
+if it were real.
+
+They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite
+to pay off her father’s debts and request the manufacturers of chemical
+products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any
+orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of
+dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This
+corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which
+augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the
+thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his
+own house, started for Douai.
+
+Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the
+nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily
+diverted the chemist’s mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of
+his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous
+company of his family and friends gathering about him his emotion was
+so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids
+reddened, and he held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming
+unable to release them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to
+tears.
+
+When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from
+the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the
+court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details
+with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew
+himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears
+came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care
+with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he
+formerly had sold,--a visible sign that all the other disasters had been
+repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and
+shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware not less valuable than
+the treasures that formerly stood there. Though the family meal lasted
+a long time, it was still too short for the narratives which Balthazar
+exacted from each of his children. The reaction of his moral being
+caused by this return to his home wedded him once more to family
+happiness, and he was again a father. His manners recovered their former
+dignity. At first the delight of recovering possession kept him from
+dwelling on the means by which the recovery had been brought about. His
+joy therefore was full and unalloyed.
+
+Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into
+the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal
+papers which the notary’s clerk had laid upon a table, by which he
+was standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and
+Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+
+“This,” said Pierquin, “is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes
+renders to his children. It is not very amusing,” he added, laughing
+after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in
+speaking of serious matters, “but I must really oblige you to listen to
+it.”
+
+Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a
+reproach, and his brow clouded.
+
+The clerk began the reading. Balthazar’s amazement increased as little
+by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the
+fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been
+sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of
+the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and
+as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In
+consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar
+was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released
+from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were
+signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys
+formerly borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.
+
+Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood,
+the life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and
+looked about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of
+her sex, had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to
+see that all the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared. Each
+member of the family understood the old man’s wish when the failing
+humid eyes sought for the daughter,--who was seen by all present, with
+the eyes of the soul, as an angel of strength and light within the
+house. Gabriel went to find her. Hearing her step, Balthazar ran to
+clasp her in his arms.
+
+“Father,” she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man caught
+her and strained her to his breast, “I implore you not to lessen your
+sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying out your
+wishes, and be the sole author of the good that has been done here.”
+
+Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter, folded
+his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face recovered an
+expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long years,--
+
+“Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!”
+
+He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went
+back to the parlor.
+
+“My children,” he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former
+days had made him so imposing, “we all owe gratitude and thanks to
+my daughter Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has
+fulfilled my intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed
+by my labors, gave the reins of our domestic government into her hands.”
+
+“Ah, now!” cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, “we must read the
+marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids
+me to draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur
+Raparlier is coming.”
+
+The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+Claes’s return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company
+quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality
+of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three
+families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to
+vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The
+parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal
+couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere
+shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave
+as to those who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone
+on every face, and the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost
+sight of by the spectators,--who often busy themselves in estimating it
+out of curiosity.
+
+The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated,
+all present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the
+parlor on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next
+to them stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on, Felicie
+and Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only persons who were
+seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who, for this occasion,
+had taken Pierquin’s duty. Jean stood behind his father. A score of
+ladies elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from among the nearest
+relatives of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the Claes, the mayor of
+Douai, who was to marry the couples, the twelve witnesses chosen from
+among the nearest friends of the three families, all, even the curate of
+Saint-Pierre, remained standing and formed an imposing circle at the
+end of the parlor next the court-yard. This homage paid by the whole
+assembly to Paternity, which at such a moment shines with almost regal
+majesty, gave to the scene a certain antique character. It was the only
+moment for sixteen long years when Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+
+Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if all
+the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived; on
+receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took up
+the marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis, which
+was the first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor opened
+and Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+
+“Monsieur! monsieur!” he cried.
+
+Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a
+sign, he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious of
+a shock.
+
+“I dared not tell you, my child,” said the father, “but since you
+have done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+Lemulquinier lent me all his savings--the fruit of twenty years’
+economy--for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah! my
+angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled me
+in my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,--without him I should have
+died.”
+
+“Monsieur! monsieur!” cried Lemulquinier.
+
+“What is it?” said Balthazar, turning round.
+
+“A diamond!”
+
+Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+valet, who whispered in his ear,--
+
+“I have been to the laboratory.”
+
+The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on
+the old Fleming which meant, “You went before me to the laboratory!”
+
+“Yes,” continued Lemulquinier, “I found the diamond in the china capsule
+which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur--and
+see!” he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose
+brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+
+“My children, my friends,” said Balthazar, “forgive my old servant,
+forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years
+has produced--without me--a discovery I have sought for sixteen years.
+How? My God, I know not--yes, I left sulphide of carbon under the
+influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched
+from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my
+laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it
+not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that
+slow, that sudden--what can I call it?--crystallization, transformation,
+in short that miracle, then, then my children would have been richer
+still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem which I
+seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that diamond upon
+my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied affections have
+made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of Science.”
+
+Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
+
+Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected
+the souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite,
+saying,--
+
+“It is thine, my angel.”
+
+Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the
+notary, saying, “Go on.”
+
+The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as
+Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he
+reseated himself, said in a low voice,--
+
+“To-day I must be a father only.”
+
+Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and
+kissed it respectfully.
+
+“No man was ever greater,” said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to
+him; “no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad.”
+
+After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened
+to question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been
+formed; but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident. He
+looked through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an angry
+gesture.
+
+“Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which no
+doubt produces metals, diamonds,” he said, “was manifested there for one
+moment, by one chance.”
+
+“That chance was of course some natural effect,” whispered a guest
+belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation
+of everything. “At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has
+wasted.”
+
+“Let us forget it,” said Balthazar, addressing his friends; “I beg you
+to say no more about it to-day.”
+
+Marguerite took her father’s arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms
+of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he
+entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with
+pictures and garnished with choice flowers.
+
+“Pictures!” he exclaimed, “pictures!--and some of the old ones!”
+
+He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him; he
+felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation came
+before his eyes.
+
+“It is all your own, father,” said Marguerite, guessing the feelings
+that oppressed his soul.
+
+“Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise,” he cried, “how
+many times have you given life to your father?”
+
+“Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+heart,” she said, “and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by nearly
+sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give them
+to Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be made
+comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us. Monsieur
+de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,--a life without
+luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you are able to
+return it.”
+
+“Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father’s
+providence.”
+
+When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored and
+furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently descended
+to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand staircase, on every
+step of which were rare plants and flowering shrubs. A silver service of
+exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel to his father, attracted all
+eyes to a luxury which was surprising to the inhabitants of a town where
+such luxury is traditional. The servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of
+Pierquin, as well as those of the Claes household, were assembled to
+serve the repast. Seeing himself once more at the head of that table,
+surrounded by friends and relatives and happy faces beaming with
+heartfelt joy, Balthazar, behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was
+overcome by emotions so deep and so imposing that all present kept
+silence, as men are silent before great sorrows or great joys.
+
+“Dear children,” he cried, “you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+home the prodigal father.”
+
+These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however,
+and the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character of
+a family fete.
+
+Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to
+arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor
+of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy
+day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which
+involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His
+eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging
+to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate from his daughter.
+Madame Pierquin also left her father’s house to do the honors of a fine
+mansion which Pierquin had built, and where he desired to live in
+all the dignity of rank; for his practise was sold, and his uncle des
+Racquets had died and left him a large property scraped together by slow
+economy. Jean went to Paris to finish his education, and Monsieur and
+Madame de Solis alone remained with their father in the House de Claes.
+Balthazar made over to them the family home in the rear house, and took
+up his own abode on the second floor of the front building.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father’s material comfort,
+aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from
+the hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that
+happiness entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever
+afforded a better illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless
+felicity which all women cherish in their dreams. The union of two
+beings so courageous in the trials of life, who had loved each other
+through years with so sacred an affection, drew forth the respectful
+admiration of the whole community. Monsieur de Solis, who had long held
+an appointment as inspector-general of the University, resigned those
+functions to enjoy his happiness more freely, and remained at Douai
+where every one did such homage to his character and attainments that
+his name was proposed as candidate for the Electoral college whenever
+he should reach the required age. Marguerite, who had shown herself so
+strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet and tender woman.
+
+Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and yet,
+though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his ordinary
+income sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory. Marguerite
+restored all the old customs of the House of Claes, and gave a family
+fete every month in honor of her father, at which the Pierquins and the
+Conyncks were present; and she also received the upper ranks of
+society one day in the week at a “cafe” which became celebrated. Though
+frequently absent-minded, Claes took part in all these assemblages and
+became, to please his daughter, so willingly a man of the world that the
+family were able to believe he had renounced his search for the solution
+of the great problem.
+
+Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis to
+Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself
+and the inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age,
+barrenness, and other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the last
+lineal descendant of the family and heir to the titles and estates of
+his ancient house. Moreover, by one of those curious chances which
+seem impossible except in a book, the house of Solis had acquired the
+territory and titles of the Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite did not wish
+to separate from her husband, who was to stay in Spain long enough to
+settle his affairs, and she was, moreover, curious to see the castle
+of Casa-Real where her mother had passed her childhood, and the city of
+Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. She left Douai, consigning
+the care of the house to Martha, Josette, and Lemulquinier. Balthazar,
+to whom Marguerite had proposed a journey into Spain, declined to
+accompany her on the ground of his advanced age; but certain experiments
+which he had long meditated, and to which he now trusted for the
+realization of his hopes were the real reason of his refusal.
+
+The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until the
+middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for Italy
+on their way back to France. There, however, they received a letter from
+Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months, their father
+had completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to
+pay Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries of the
+household. The old valet had again sacrificed his little property to his
+master. Balthazar was no longer willing to see any one, and would not
+even admit his children to the house. Martha and Josette were dead. The
+coachman, the cook, and the other servants had long been dismissed;
+the horses and carriages were sold. Though Lemulquinier maintained the
+utmost secrecy as to his master’s proceedings, it was believed that the
+thousand francs supplied by Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly
+on experiments. The small amount of provisions which the old valet
+purchased in the town seemed to show that the two old men contented
+themselves with the barest necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House
+of Claes, Gabriel and Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums
+which their father had again borrowed on it. None of his children had
+the slightest influence upon the old man, who at seventy years of age
+displayed extraordinary energy in bending everything to his will,
+even in matters that were trivial. Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had
+decided not to pay off his debts.
+
+This letter changed all Marguerite’s travelling plans, and she
+immediately took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her
+past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar’s debts; but she wished
+to do more, she wished to obey her mother’s last injunction and save him
+from sinking dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise enough
+ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the work
+of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from his
+enfeebled faculties. But she was also anxious to control him without
+wounding his susceptibilities,--not wishing to imitate the children of
+Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result for which he
+had sacrificed so much.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which
+they found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A
+shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the
+noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight
+of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed
+also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that house on
+Marguerite’s return to it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis’s
+valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that Monsieur
+Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.
+
+Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,--glad to escape a
+scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to
+admit her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and
+prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to
+notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+
+When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor. Horror
+overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a
+fire had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum
+and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-room was
+empty: there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal
+table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two
+forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his
+servant had evidently just eaten. In a moment she had flown through her
+father’s portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same
+desolation as the parlor and dining-room. The idea of the Alkahest had
+swept like a conflagration through the building. Her father’s bedroom
+had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter
+candlestick with a tallow candle burned almost to the socket. The house
+was so completely stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at
+the windows. Every object of the smallest value,--everything, even the
+kitchen utensils, had been sold.
+
+Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
+in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier’s chamber and
+found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer
+she found a pawnbroker’s ticket for the old servant’s watch which he had
+pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled
+with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her
+own appartement and ordered the door to be broken open--her father had
+respected it!
+
+Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
+of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
+feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
+tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
+climax, brought about in Marguerite’s soul one of those moral reactions
+against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the
+parlor to wait her father’s arrival, in a state of anxiety that was
+cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she
+about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts
+his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears
+flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the desecrated
+sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts, her useless
+precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,--all, even her
+little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all were parts of a
+poem of unutterable melancholy.
+
+Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
+the catastrophe that was to close her father’s life,--that life at once
+so grand and yet so miserable.
+
+The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
+eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
+who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
+philosopher’s stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
+this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated his
+purposes and branded him with the name of “alchemist,” casting up to
+him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are
+uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
+genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate
+in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and “tutti quanti.” The
+people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of
+genius.
+
+These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from
+the bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity among
+persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,--two
+sentiments big with contempt and with the “vae victis” with which the
+masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune. Persons
+often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the rose
+window of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been
+consumed in smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they pointed
+to him with their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a mocking
+jest or a word of pity would escape the lips of a working-man or some
+mere child. But Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it was
+homage; he could deceive him with impunity, for though the old man’s
+eyes retained the sublime clearness which results from the habit of
+living among great thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+
+To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+common consent “the House of Claes,” was now called in the suburbs and
+the country districts “the Devil’s House.” Every outward sign, even the
+face of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were current
+about Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to purchase the few
+provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking out the cheapest
+he could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,--just as butchers
+slip bones into their customers’ meat,--and he was fortunate, poor
+creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not refuse to sell him
+his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact with an imp of hell.
+
+Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand
+old man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes added
+to this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have seen
+better days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are ashamed
+to beg. It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would be insulted
+in the streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the family any public
+insult would be, had for some time past sent two or three of his own
+servants to follow the old man whenever he went out, and keep him
+in sight at a little distance, for the purpose of protecting him if
+necessary,--the revolution of July not having contributed to make the
+citizens respectful.
+
+By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the secret
+guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back from
+the ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the place
+Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to school.
+Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men, whose faces
+brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys began to
+talk of them. Generally, children’s chatter ends in laughter; on this
+occasion the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know the
+cruelty. Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance,
+and examined the strange old faces with smothered laughter and remarks
+which attracted Lemulquinier’s attention.
+
+“Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, he was born a Wise Man.”
+
+“My papa says he makes gold,” said another.
+
+The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and was
+devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and said
+boldly to Lemulquinier,--
+
+“Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?”
+
+“Yes, my little man,” replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on the
+cheek; “we will give you some of you study well.”
+
+“Ah! monsieur, give me some, too,” was the general exclamation.
+
+The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the
+old men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by
+these sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general
+shout of laughter.
+
+“Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man,” said Lemulquinier.
+
+“Hi, the old harlequin!” cried the lads; “the old sorcerer! you are
+sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!”
+
+Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his cane;
+they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A workman
+who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier brandish his
+cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them, and took their
+part, crying out,--
+
+“Down with the sorcerers!”
+
+The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the
+old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin’s servants,
+appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
+however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud.
+The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
+chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
+that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon
+of introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body
+could not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings,
+and he fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who
+brought him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and
+their servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from
+following the body of the old man to the door of his house, where
+Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister
+had sent for, were waiting to receive him.
+
+The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
+less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing
+that his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of
+his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every
+care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening,
+allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though
+skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood;
+and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially
+affected, perhaps because the old man’s anger had concentrated all
+his forces upon it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the
+children.
+
+This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
+law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
+this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
+more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
+that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
+his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
+to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
+late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
+the matter might be allowed to drop.
+
+Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
+tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
+At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her
+he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He
+was able to press his daughter’s hand with his cold fingers, putting
+into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had
+the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell
+of the brain which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived.
+Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the
+gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his
+memory, this giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded
+him with respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images
+of plenty and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family.
+His every look--by which alone he could manifest his feelings--was
+unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
+that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.
+
+Marguerite paid her father’s debts, and restored a modern splendor to
+the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
+left the old man’s bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
+accomplish his slightest wish.
+
+Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
+the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
+listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his
+bed.
+
+Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
+critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned
+by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took
+place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to
+watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward
+convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last agony.
+
+The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
+sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
+an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
+out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his
+bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death
+made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual
+satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by
+the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading
+might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently
+struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, “DISCOVERY OF THE
+ABSOLUTE,”--which startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite
+concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the
+secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a low voice, and
+Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar heard it.
+
+Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
+illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
+rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered
+with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, “EUREKA!”--I have
+found.
+
+He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
+died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
+last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
+Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!--by
+the fleshless fingers of Death.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+
+     Casa-Real, Duc de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+
+     Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Protez and Chiffreville
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Savaron de Savarus
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
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+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Alkahest
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2010 [EBook #1453]
+Last Updated: November 21, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE ALKAHEST
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say&mdash;May God grant it!
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE ALKAHEST</b> </a><br />
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE ALKAHEST
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      (THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+      arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those
+      of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so
+      naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent
+      land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest of
+      other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic preliminaries,&mdash;since
+      they have roused a protest from certain ignorant and voracious readers who
+      want emotions without undergoing the generating process, the flower
+      without the seed, the child without gestation. Is Art supposed to have
+      higher powers than Nature?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so closely
+      allied to architecture that the majority of observers can reconstruct
+      nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life, from the
+      remains of public monuments or the relics of a home. Archaeology is to
+      social nature what comparative anatomy is to organized nature. A mosaic
+      tells the tale of a society, as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus opens up
+      a creative epoch. All things are linked together, and all are therefore
+      deducible. Causes suggest effects, effects lead back to causes. Science
+      resuscitates even the warts of the past ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description, provided
+      the imagination of the writer does not distort essential facts. The mind
+      is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to man, the
+      past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been, and you seldom
+      fail to show him what will be. It is rare indeed that the picture of a
+      locality where lives are lived does not recall to some their dawning
+      hopes, to others their wasted faith. The comparison between a present
+      which disappoints man&rsquo;s secret wishes and a future which may realize them,
+      is an inexhaustible source of sadness or of placid content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+      over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given. Why
+      so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best conclusion
+      to man&rsquo;s uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its family ties,
+      and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its comfortable
+      well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to beatitude; but,
+      above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly sensuous happiness,
+      where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it. Whatever value a
+      passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life of feeling, it never
+      sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish nature, where the
+      throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that superficial minds deny
+      the heart&rsquo;s existence. The crowd prefers the abnormal force which
+      overflows to that which moves with steady persistence. The world has
+      neither time nor patience to realize the immense power concealed beneath
+      an appearance of uniformity. Therefore, to impress this multitude carried
+      away on the current of existence, passion, like a great artist, is
+      compelled to go beyond the mark, to exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo,
+      Bianca Capello, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini.
+      Far-seeing minds alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy
+      represented by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior
+      men. The life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the
+      conditions of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average
+      citizen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+      English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+      old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+      and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies no
+      weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan &ldquo;far-niente.&rdquo;
+       Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most essential condition),
+      patience, and the element which renders its creations durable, namely,
+      conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character lies in the two words, patience
+      and conscience; words which seem at first to exclude the richness of
+      poetic light and shade, and to make the manners and customs of the country
+      as flat as its vast plains, as cold as its foggy skies. And yet it is not
+      so. Civilization has brought her power to bear, and has modified all
+      things, even the effects of climate. If we observe attentively the
+      productions of various parts of the globe, we are surprised to find that
+      the prevailing tints from the temperate zones are gray or fawn, while the
+      more brilliant colors belong to the products of the hotter climates. The
+      manners and customs of a country must naturally conform to this law of
+      nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and monotonous
+      in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky atmosphere through its
+      political vicissitudes, which brought it under the successive dominion of
+      Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it into fraternal relations with
+      Germany and Holland. From Spain it acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and
+      shimmering satins, tapestries of vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and
+      courtly bearing. In exchange for its linen and its laces, it brought from
+      Venice that fairy glass-ware in which wine sparkles and seems the
+      mellower. From Austria it learned the ponderous diplomacy which, to use a
+      popular saying, takes three steps backward to one forward; while its trade
+      with India poured into it the grotesque designs of China and the marvels
+      of Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+      tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of all
+      things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general storehouse
+      of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco brought into one
+      smoky outline the scattered features of its national physiognomy.
+      Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of their territory,
+      the Flemings became a people homogeneous through their pipes and beer.[*]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    [*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the products
+      and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country of Flanders,
+      by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for itself an original
+      existence, with characteristic manners and customs which bear no signs of
+      servile imitation. Art stripped off its ideality and produced form alone.
+      We may seek in vain for plastic grace, the swing of comedy, dramatic
+      action, musical genius, or the bold flight of ode and epic. On the other
+      hand, the people are fertile in discoveries, and trained to scientific
+      discussions which demand time and the midnight oil. All things bear the
+      ear-mark of temporal enjoyment. There men look exclusively to the thing
+      that is: their thoughts are so scrupulously bent on supplying the wants of
+      this life that they have never risen, in any direction, above the level of
+      this present earth. The sole idea they have ever conceived of the future
+      is that of a thrifty, prosaic statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came
+      from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
+      table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
+      porches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which comes
+      of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that craving for
+      liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the compactness of their
+      ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted on their nature made the
+      Flemish people a formidable body of men in the defence of their rights.
+      Among them nothing is half-done,&mdash;neither houses, furniture, dikes,
+      husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a monopoly of all that they
+      undertake. The manufacture of linen, and that of lace, a work of patient
+      agriculture and still more patient industry, are hereditary like their
+      family fortunes. If we were asked to show in human form the purest
+      specimen of solid stability, we could do no better than point to a
+      portrait of some old burgomaster, capable, as was proved again and again,
+      of dying in a commonplace way, and without the incitements of glory, for
+      the welfare of his Free-town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life, which
+      will come naturally to the surface in the description of an ancient house
+      which, at the period when this history begins, was one of the last in
+      Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of Flemish life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+      modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides, and
+      the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old buildings
+      are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of a venerable past
+      are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and fashions and modes of
+      life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be left of that ancient
+      Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality, its traditional Spanish
+      courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland. Mansions of white
+      stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and the cosy comfort of
+      Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the capricious elegance of
+      Parisian novelties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about the
+      middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more than two
+      centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly one of the
+      great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of production, the
+      Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has never lost. For a
+      long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and were, from generation to
+      generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild of Weavers. When the great
+      city revolted under Charles V., who tried to suppress its privileges, the
+      head of the Claes family was so deeply compromised in the rebellion that,
+      foreseeing a catastrophe and bound to share the fate of his associates, he
+      secretly sent wife, children, and property to France before the Emperor
+      invested the town. The syndic&rsquo;s forebodings were justified. Together with
+      other burghers who were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a
+      rebel, though he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless execution
+      cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions in the
+      Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of martyrs gives
+      the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who punished revolt through
+      two generations, stretched his iron sceptre over Douai, the Claes
+      preserved their great wealth by allying themselves in marriage with the
+      very noble family of Molina, whose elder branch, then poor, thus became
+      rich enough to buy the county of Nourho which they had long held titularly
+      in the kingdom of Leon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which are
+      of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was represented
+      at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina, Comte de
+      Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of the immense
+      fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion over a thousand
+      looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand francs a year from
+      landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and the house in the rue
+      de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a fortune. As to the family
+      possessions in Leon, they had been in litigation between the Molinas of
+      Douai and the branch of the family which remained in Spain. The Molinas of
+      Leon won the domain and assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the
+      Claes alone had a legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher
+      was superior to the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights
+      were instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his
+      Spanish nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families exiled
+      under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth century, the
+      Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and traditions of their
+      ancestors. They married into none but the purest burgher families, and
+      required a certain number of aldermen and burgomasters in the pedigree of
+      every bride-elect before admitting her to the family. They sought their
+      wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or in Holland; so that the time-honored
+      domestic customs might be perpetuated around their hearthstones. This
+      social group became more and more restricted, until, at the close of the
+      last century, it mustered only some seven or eight families of the
+      parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and
+      magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of
+      their life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was
+      well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of the
+      Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
+      objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,&mdash;the House
+      of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
+      which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
+      houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
+      their homes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+      studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
+      which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
+      doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
+      bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette of
+      Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark upon
+      the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care taken of
+      it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note all its
+      details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+      color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+      side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+      resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white stone
+      ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the window
+      in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross, which
+      divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal bar,
+      placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes of
+      the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding at
+      the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with three
+      rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
+      projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of a
+      Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and diamond-shaped, were
+      set in very slender leading, painted red. The walls of the house, of brick
+      jointed with white mortar, were braced at regular distances, and at the
+      angles of the house, by stone courses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three, while
+      the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+      surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+      triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of a
+      cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver&rsquo;s shuttle
+      threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+      formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like
+      steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the rain
+      from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws of a
+      fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at the
+      base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the two
+      windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through which the
+      cellars were entered,&mdash;a last vestige of ancient usages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully cleaned
+      twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks, the crack
+      was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings, were dusted
+      oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The front of the
+      house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened color which age
+      had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as a choice old picture,
+      or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which would be ever new were it
+      not for the blistering of our climate and the effect of gases, whose
+      pernicious breath threatens our own health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+      produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+      brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover, the
+      very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the eye. A
+      poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little moss in the
+      crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of the brick; he
+      would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the red coping that
+      roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and immaculate air of this
+      facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave the house a tone of
+      severe propriety and estimable decency which would have driven a
+      romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to take lodgings over
+      the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung from
+      the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman, coming from
+      within, had admitted him through the side of the double-door in which was
+      a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door escaped from her hand and
+      swung back by its own weight with a solemn, ponderous sound that echoed
+      along the roof of a wide paved archway and through the depths of the
+      house, as though the door had been of iron. This archway, painted to
+      resemble marble, always clean and daily sprinkled with fresh sand, led
+      into a large court-yard paved with smooth square stones of a greenish
+      color. On the left were the linen-rooms, kitchens, and servants&rsquo; hall; to
+      the right, the wood-house, coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls,
+      and windows were decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The
+      daylight, threading its way between four red walls chequered with white
+      lines, caught rosy tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and
+      fantastic appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+      Flanders the &ldquo;back-quarter,&rdquo; stood at the farther end of the court-yard,
+      and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
+      ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-yard, and
+      two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as the
+      house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led at one
+      end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and were in
+      line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor entering the
+      latter could see through to the greenery which draped the lower end of the
+      garden. The front building, which was reserved for receptions and the
+      lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art and accumulated wealth,
+      but none of them equalled in the eyes of a Claes, nor indeed in the
+      judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures contained in the parlor, where
+      for over two centuries the family life had glided on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these days
+      be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to say that
+      he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by the manufacture
+      of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,&mdash;this Claes had a
+      friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges. The artist
+      had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich craftsman. Some time
+      before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van Huysum, grown rich himself,
+      had secretly carved for his friend a wall-decoration in ebony,
+      representing the chief scenes in the life of Van Artevelde,&mdash;that
+      brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This
+      wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained
+      about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van Huysum&rsquo;s
+      masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers whom Charles V.
+      determined to hang when he re-entered his native town, proposed, it is
+      said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give him Van Huysum&rsquo;s
+      great work; but the weaver had already despatched it to Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
+      Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr&rsquo;s memory, came to Douai to frame
+      in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore the
+      most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell for
+      nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes the
+      martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court of
+      Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as their
+      greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very high
+      mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last century; on it
+      now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five twisted branches, in
+      bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows were draped by wide
+      curtains of red damask with a flowered black design, lined with white
+      silk; the furniture, covered with the same material, had been renovated in
+      the time of Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large
+      squares of white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of
+      many oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
+      had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native Dutch
+      oak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+      candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table stood
+      in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were symmetrically
+      placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there stood, at the
+      period when this history begins, two glass globes filled with water, in
+      which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and silver fish were
+      swimming about. The room was both brilliant and sombre. The ceiling
+      necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none. Although on the garden
+      side all was bright and glowing, and the sunshine danced upon the ebony
+      carvings, the windows on the court-yard admitted so little light that the
+      gold threads in the lapis-lazuli scarcely glittered on the opposite wall.
+      This parlor, which could be gorgeous on a fine day, was usually, under the
+      Flemish skies, filled with soft shadows and melancholy russet tones, like
+      those shed by the sun on the tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes, in
+      other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
+      it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+      woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+      looking out upon the garden. The sun&rsquo;s rays fell obliquely upon the house
+      and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the carved
+      panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo projected
+      through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an ordinary
+      painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment, would
+      assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full of pain
+      and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the feet stretched
+      out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses consciousness of
+      physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed in a fixed idea:
+      she was following its gleams in the far future, just as sometimes on the
+      shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds
+      and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair, and
+      her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A dress
+      of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment as to the
+      proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the folds of a
+      scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the light had not
+      thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show in preference to the
+      rest of her person, it would still have been impossible to escape riveting
+      the attention exclusively upon it. Its expression of stupefaction, which
+      was cold and rigid despite hot tears that were rolling from her eyes,
+      would have struck the most thoughtless mind. Nothing is more terrible to
+      behold than excessive grief that is rarely allowed to break forth, of
+      which traces were left on this woman&rsquo;s face like lava congealed about a
+      crater. She might have been a dying mother compelled to leave her children
+      in abysmal depths of wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human
+      protector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not nearly
+      so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of the
+      characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in heavy
+      curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
+      prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
+      sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
+      altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
+      small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
+      though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
+      dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of the
+      soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in this
+      strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply
+      curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior malformation; yet
+      there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition
+      between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light shone through it.
+      Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed the pride of noble
+      birth, their expression was one of kindliness and natural courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be questioned,
+      but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed, and lame, this
+      woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world obstinately
+      refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were men who were
+      deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its tokens of
+      ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was seemingly
+      irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+      Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
+      days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
+      emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
+      her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
+      nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
+      time powerless over destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at the
+      fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if to
+      invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to God
+      alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and the
+      shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then hotter
+      than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the moving of
+      chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to serve the
+      dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
+      and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her tears,
+      attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of pain that
+      was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the state of
+      happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from care. Whether it
+      were that the habit of living in this house to which infirmities confined
+      her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects that are imperceptible
+      to the senses of others, but which persons under the influence of
+      excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation
+      for her physical defects, had given her more delicate sensations than
+      better organized beings,&mdash;it is certain that this woman had heard the
+      steps of a man in a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants&rsquo; 
+      hall, by which the front house communicated with the &ldquo;back-quarter.&rdquo; The
+      steps grew more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this
+      ardent creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
+      would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led down
+      from the gallery to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
+      thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong step
+      produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, &ldquo;Fire!&rdquo; his feet
+      speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary gait ought
+      not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the dragging step
+      of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting spectator; but an
+      observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have felt something akin
+      to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed devoid of life, and
+      under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two iron weights were
+      striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once either the heavy,
+      undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of a great thinker
+      bearing the worlds with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet upon
+      the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood still for
+      a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the servants&rsquo; hall,
+      and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed in the panelling
+      of that room,&mdash;as was another door, leading from the parlor to the
+      dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the sensation caused by
+      an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the armchair; then a soft
+      smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by the expectation of a
+      pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna. She suddenly gained
+      strength to drive her terrors back into the depths of her heart. Then she
+      turned her face to the panel of the wall which she knew was about to open,
+      and which in fact was now pushed in with such brusque violence that the
+      poor woman herself seemed jarred by the shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not look
+      at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood erect in
+      the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his right hand. A
+      sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself, although it was
+      daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile, contracted the sallow
+      forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line which the frequent
+      expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply; her eyes filled with
+      tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family of
+      Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who had
+      threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood there at
+      this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he was only fifty;
+      and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable likeness. His tall
+      figure was slightly bent,&mdash;either because his labors, whatever they
+      were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column was curved by the
+      weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square shoulders, but the
+      lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though nervous; and this
+      discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once perfect puzzled the
+      mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous figure by some possible
+      singularities of the man&rsquo;s life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the Dutch
+      fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+      eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
+      which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes had
+      the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult causes.
+      The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and the
+      nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary tension
+      of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent, which made
+      the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full
+      of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a short chin, which
+      projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was long rather than
+      oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every human face a
+      likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in that of
+      Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse&rsquo;s head. The
+      skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire were
+      incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space, as if
+      to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
+      that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale face
+      furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of an old
+      monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose fires were
+      fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the inward
+      consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed to have sunk
+      in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible reaction of hopes
+      destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous fanaticism inspired by an
+      art or a science was evident in this man; it betrayed itself in the
+      strange, persistent abstraction of his mind expressed by his dress and
+      bearing, which were in keeping with the anomalous peculiarities of his
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
+      had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned and
+      the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the master
+      alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth trousers
+      were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry,
+      his greenish coat ripped at the seams,&mdash;completing an array of signs,
+      great and small, which in any other man would have betokened a poverty
+      begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the negligence of
+      genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads the
+      common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time and
+      wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital than the
+      worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices than for
+      genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits accruing from
+      the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the social world fears
+      to square accounts with the man of learning in his lifetime, preferring to
+      get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his misfortunes or his
+      poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
+      Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
+      companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
+      fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
+      ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
+      things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
+      to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
+      have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
+      man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: &ldquo;He
+      must have been very handsome in his youth.&rdquo; A vulgar error! Never was
+      Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater, had
+      he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience, of
+      Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,&mdash;where all was broad and noble,
+      and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
+      sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness complete:
+      and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic service, for the
+      world or for the family, was directed, fatally, elsewhere. This citizen,
+      bound to guard the welfare of a household, to manage property, to guide
+      his children towards a noble future, was living outside the line of his
+      duty and his affections, in communion with an attendant spirit. A priest
+      might have thought him inspired by the word of God; an artist would have
+      hailed him as a great master; an enthusiast would have taken him for a
+      seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
+      he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
+      was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
+      of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
+      simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
+      forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the eye
+      and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul, but
+      she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which gives a
+      foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the most
+      illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste had she
+      not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly pleasing the
+      man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably, and without
+      producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects of her
+      conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders only, one
+      of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the garden,
+      as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently said, in a
+      gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman&rsquo;s submissiveness,&mdash;for
+      between these two love had long since driven out the pride of her Spanish
+      nature:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
+      you have been to mass or vespers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands, and
+      waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor indifference,
+      only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those beings who
+      preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their youthful
+      delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to wound by so much
+      as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical disfigurement. No
+      man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices to blot out years of
+      happiness, and is the more cruel because it contrasts with the unfailing
+      tenderness of the past: our nature leads us to suffer more from one
+      discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in the midst of trouble can
+      bring us joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
+      said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where magnificent
+      tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped short as if
+      brought up against a wall, and cried out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should they not combine within a given time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he going mad?&rdquo; thought the wife, much terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth by
+      the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance back
+      at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the Duke of
+      Casa-Real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+      twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He came
+      to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent manners in
+      the society of Madame d&rsquo;Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince of Aremberg, the
+      Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen originally from
+      Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth won them
+      admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the tone to
+      social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends ready to
+      launch him into the great world at the very moment when that world was
+      about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more attracted by
+      glory and science than by the vanities of life. He frequented the society
+      of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who at that time was better
+      known to the world for his enormous fortune as a &ldquo;fermier-general&rdquo; than
+      for his discoveries in chemistry,&mdash;though later the great chemist was
+      to eclipse the man of wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated, and
+      became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as Helvetius,
+      and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit and love
+      exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor that
+      Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for those
+      mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take finishing
+      lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good society, which
+      in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+      Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither his
+      ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender, which
+      the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted to his
+      character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian salon
+      had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and the
+      little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man must needs
+      be without a home to remain in Paris,&mdash;Paris, the city of
+      cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
+      Science, Art, or Power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine&rsquo;s pigeon to its
+      nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the Gayant
+      procession,&mdash;Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory of
+      Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family had
+      emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar&rsquo;s father and mother had left
+      the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time in
+      settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he needed
+      the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened upon his
+      mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in Ghent, or at
+      Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he met there suited
+      him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as to marriage; from his
+      youth he had been accused of never following the beaten track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady, then
+      living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
+      discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
+      destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she was
+      perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar&rsquo;s old cousin, at whose house
+      the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or not, she
+      had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying man; and he
+      told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents&rsquo; property to
+      enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name; thus preferring
+      his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future to his interests,&mdash;for
+      it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de Temninck would marry late
+      in life and without property when, young and wealthy, she had met with no
+      aspirant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de
+      Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
+      Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
+      listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
+      who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
+      handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
+      consented to allow him to woo her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly submissive
+      to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she feels within
+      herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility and true
+      feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of cruel
+      vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,&mdash;emotions,
+      terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore, to
+      be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
+      keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
+      lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
+      exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear that we
+      may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the hesitations
+      of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic propulsions which
+      give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the promptings to suicide caused
+      by a word, dispelled by an intonation; trembling glances which veil an
+      inward daring; sudden desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their
+      own violence; the secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering
+      voice; the mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that
+      divine discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so
+      exquisite a flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of
+      young love, and the weaknesses of its power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
+      The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as the
+      handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused her
+      pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide in the
+      depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women delight in
+      making known by their manners,&mdash;wearing it proudly, like a coronet.
+      The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared to express
+      her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and answer as it were
+      of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves, would they not be
+      in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful woman can be her
+      natural self,&mdash;the world overlooks her little follies or her
+      clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the noblest
+      expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her
+      gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing.
+      She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no faults; she is
+      denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never
+      given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment,
+      must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
+      exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the hearts
+      from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and stinging pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her, and
+      the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by the
+      world,&mdash;a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
+      apparent,&mdash;oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
+      of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
+      and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving and
+      beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone. Unhappy
+      and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
+      enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the love
+      thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to wear the
+      draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her Spanish eyes
+      grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her beautiful as
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
+      herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
+      domestic slave,&mdash;one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
+      had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied with
+      a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless value to
+      the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and the
+      permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes she
+      provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness of her
+      lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung from
+      Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
+      embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what he
+      loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each day of
+      life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married life the
+      handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest. After
+      gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending to
+      reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
+      ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
+      delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
+      Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a woman,
+      was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of being
+      loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling and sentiment
+      would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she fancied a grandeur
+      in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not believe; finally, she
+      was forced to admit that happiness, however short its duration might be,
+      was too precious to resign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the unexpectedness
+      of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar with a love that was
+      well-nigh chivalric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+      wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent in
+      the patriarchal house of the Claes,&mdash;the treasures of which were
+      increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+      several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+      mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother, the
+      Duke of Casa-Real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
+      fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light into
+      every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of character
+      which produce discord, and deprive their households of the harmony which
+      is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with some littleness or
+      meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering. One man is honorable
+      and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly, but obstinate; this
+      one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and uncertain; that other,
+      preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections as he would a debt,
+      bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the daily life of happiness,&mdash;in
+      short, the average man of social life is essentially incomplete, without
+      being signally to blame. Men of talent are as variable as barometers;
+      genius alone is intrinsically good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of the
+      moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are capable&mdash;the
+      one through weakness, the other by strength&mdash;of that equanimity of
+      temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the asperities of daily
+      life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity; in the other,
+      indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he is the
+      interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle and
+      application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is vacancy,
+      in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to take dull men
+      as the small change for great ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
+      delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like all
+      men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to develop all
+      its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of happiness, his
+      noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of grace. Though he
+      shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth century, he installed a
+      chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the risk he ran from the
+      revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart the Spanish fanaticism
+      which his wife had sucked in with her mother&rsquo;s milk: later, when public
+      worship was restored in France, he accompanied her to mass every Sunday.
+      His passion never ceased to be that of a lover. The protecting power,
+      which women like so much, was never exercised by this husband, lest to
+      that wife it might seem pity. He treated her with exquisite flattery as an
+      equal, and sometimes mutinied against her, as men will, as though to brave
+      the supremacy of a pretty woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his
+      speech was ever tender; he loved his Josephine for herself and for
+      himself, with an ardor that crowned with perpetual praise the qualities
+      and the loveliness of a wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+      self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary, and
+      not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty was the
+      only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was equal;
+      for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of his
+      hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
+      wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
+      intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite, but
+      she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the genius
+      of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind fanaticism
+      which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death. Balthazar&rsquo;s
+      own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his wife, and inspired
+      her with an imperious need of giving more than she received. This mutual
+      exchange of happiness which each lavished upon the other, put the
+      mainspring of her life visibly outside of her personality, and filled her
+      words, her looks, her actions, with an ever-growing love. Gratitude
+      fertilized and varied the life of each heart; and the certainty of being
+      all in all to one another excluded the paltry things of existence, while
+      it magnified the smallest accessories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
+      he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young&mdash;are
+      they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
+      go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To forget
+      that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of a moment,
+      but to love her because she is lame is the deification of her defects. In
+      the gospel of womanhood it is written: &ldquo;Blessed are the imperfect, for
+      theirs is the kingdom of Love.&rdquo; If this be so, surely beauty is a
+      misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in the feeling that a
+      woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as another is married
+      for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a woman disinherited
+      of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam, is true love, the
+      mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a sentiment for which the
+      day of disenchantment never comes. That woman has charms unknown to the
+      world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws herself: she is beautiful
+      with a meaning; her glory lies in making her imperfections forgotten, and
+      thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women in
+      whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,&mdash;Cleopatra, Jeanne de
+      Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
+      Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
+      famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
+      number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
+      of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives more
+      by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
+      limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
+      not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based? An
+      ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to herself
+      the inconstancy of her master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+      origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
+      up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
+      convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
+      the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
+      dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
+      dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to have
+      little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good result;
+      it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of mind
+      uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world, she
+      became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first years
+      of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least the
+      knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society: but he
+      was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the heart. Josephine
+      never forgot anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she
+      remembered the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her
+      evening studies nothing remained to her on the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
+      but Madame Claes&rsquo;s understanding of the passion of love was so simple and
+      ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and the
+      thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she managed
+      always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that her
+      ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another so well
+      that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion, phenomena
+      arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the conditions of
+      life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not laughter, joy,
+      and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow,
+      man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering
+      either the means or the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
+      Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
+      Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she knew
+      how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth and
+      dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so near to
+      God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of her heart,
+      that her love was not without a certain respectful fear which made it
+      keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and
+      put her self-love into making the home life liberally happy,&mdash;preserving
+      every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing
+      that did not serve the purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with
+      the choicest food, and putting everything within those walls into harmony
+      with the life of her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was born
+      in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+      Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal to
+      her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially during
+      the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those nearly
+      balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy of the
+      other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the moment when
+      this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet house begins,
+      were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1805, Madame Claes&rsquo;s brother died without children. The Spanish law
+      does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+      follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+      thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
+      seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes was
+      such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it, Josephine
+      felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that of her
+      husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so nobly given
+      everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage which worldly
+      minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance, seen from the
+      standpoint of material interests. The use to which this sum of money
+      should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to determine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
+      objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
+      worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
+      periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation followed
+      the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity of completing
+      a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became hereditary in the
+      family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery leading from the
+      family building to the reception-rooms on the first floor of the front
+      house, as well as some fifty others placed about the salons, were the
+      product of the patient researches of three centuries. Among them were
+      choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow,
+      Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and
+      Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were
+      authentic and masterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this Claes
+      was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact, each
+      and all had their mania, their passion,&mdash;a trait which belongs in a
+      striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a last
+      relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest known
+      collection of tulips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
+      and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,&mdash;a house that
+      was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
+      of price and glowing with rich color,&mdash;Balthazar Claes possessed a
+      country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
+      basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
+      old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
+      ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the richest
+      men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved the wisdom of
+      this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of property, the
+      Title of Succession would some day leave each child with limited means,
+      and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection. Balthazar, therefore,
+      in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife&rsquo;s property so as to secure
+      to each child a fortune eventually equal to his own. The house of Claes
+      still maintained its moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands
+      somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the country, but which in
+      ten years&rsquo; time, if well-preserved, would return an enormous value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+      appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife that,
+      by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to which the
+      provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when she lived
+      in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her. She received
+      every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month. Her friends
+      felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where, indeed, her
+      passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the education of her
+      children tended to keep her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this household,
+      which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of conventional ideas,
+      though the outward life of these two persons, secretly full of love and
+      joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s passion for his
+      wife, which she had known how to perpetuate, seemed, to use his own
+      expression, to spend its inborn vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of
+      happiness, which was far better than the cultivation of tulips (though to
+      that he had always had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of
+      following a mania like his ancestors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+      underwent a fatal change,&mdash;a change which began so gradually that at
+      first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
+      night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt it
+      incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
+      submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar&rsquo;s confidence;
+      which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she had
+      never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of obtaining
+      an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still retained enough
+      of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a refusal. Besides, the
+      moral malady of her husband had its phases, and only came by slow degrees
+      to the intolerable point at which it destroyed the happiness of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several months
+      cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his character
+      showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness. Madame Claes
+      long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of the secret
+      employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he would reveal
+      it when it developed some useful result; many men are led by pride to
+      conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them known at the
+      moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely domestic happiness
+      would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar became aware of this
+      chasm in the life of love, which his heart would surely disavow. Josephine
+      knew her husband well enough to be certain that he would never forgive
+      himself for having made his Pepita less than happy during several months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
+      him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows no
+      separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment without
+      suffering. She waited for the return of her husband&rsquo;s affection, saying
+      daily to herself, &ldquo;To-morrow it may come,&rdquo;&mdash;treating her happiness as
+      though it were an absent friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
+      Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of her
+      husband&rsquo;s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an abstraction
+      even greater than the rest. Her woman&rsquo;s pride, hurt for the first time,
+      made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which separated her from
+      the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar&rsquo;s condition grew
+      rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his domestic happiness,
+      who played for hours with his children on the parlor carpet or round the
+      garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the light of his Pepita&rsquo;s
+      dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family
+      life, and even forgot his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+      preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood ran
+      cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to her that
+      she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was seriously
+      alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair, then to
+      feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of melancholy
+      reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling herself old
+      and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating consideration
+      for her in this secret occupation by which he secured to her a negative
+      fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his independence by allowing
+      one of those unspoken divorces which make the happiness of many a
+      marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
+      to read her husband&rsquo;s heart, and found it closed. Little by little, she
+      saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he neglected
+      his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could be no doubt
+      that he was given over to some passion that was not of the heart, but
+      which, to a woman&rsquo;s mind, is not less withering. His love was dormant, not
+      lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one word,&mdash;hope,
+      the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened that whenever the
+      poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her courage to question
+      her husband, she met with a few brief moments of happiness when she was
+      able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the clutch of some devilish
+      power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to return to himself. At such
+      moments, when her heaven brightened, she was too eager to enjoy its
+      happiness to trouble him with importunate questions: later, when she
+      endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly escape, leave her abruptly,
+      or drop into the gulf of meditation from which no word of hers could drag
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
+      its ravages,&mdash;at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
+      woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+      manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
+      him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
+      and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
+      changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime through
+      love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure remained,
+      but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and seemed as if
+      they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When the children had
+      gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say,
+      &ldquo;My friend, are you ill?&rdquo; and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he
+      answered, he would come to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched
+      suddenly from sleep, and utter a &ldquo;No&rdquo; so harsh and grating that it fell
+      like a stone on the palpitating heart of his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
+      Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world of
+      Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons were
+      aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
+      Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
+      expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
+      compelled to defend her husband&rsquo;s peculiarities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Claes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
+      him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
+      family but to that of his country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a town
+      whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other places,
+      not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a reaction in
+      favor of Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+      Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
+      of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
+      remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
+      household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day. But&mdash;unexpected
+      shock!&mdash;Madame Claes learned through the humiliating medium of some
+      women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance, that her husband
+      constantly imported instruments of physical science, valuable materials,
+      books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the highroad to ruin in
+      search of the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone. She ought, so her kind friends added,
+      to think of her children, and her own future; it was criminal not to use
+      her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal path on which he had
+      entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
+      these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her apparent
+      confidence, and she resolved to break through her present system of
+      silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little scenes in
+      which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at such a
+      moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change, the motive
+      of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and replied:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you could not understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
+      complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
+      whose life she shared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, since it interests you so much,&rdquo; said Balthazar, taking his
+      wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, &ldquo;I will tell you that I
+      have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
+      earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry, the
+      aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+      affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself in
+      the way, or that Madame Claes&rsquo;s secret anxieties made her less agreeable
+      than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but her intimate
+      friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his laboratory all
+      day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only appeared in the bosom of
+      his family at dinner-time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his country-house,
+      and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes he went to walk
+      and did not return till the following day, leaving Madame Claes a prey to
+      mortal anxiety during the night. After causing a fruitless search for him
+      through the town, whose gates, like those of other fortified places, were
+      closed at night, it was impossible to send into the country, and the
+      unhappy woman could only wait and suffer till morning. Balthazar, who had
+      forgotten the hour at which the gates closed, would come tranquilly home
+      next day, quite unmindful of the tortures his absence had inflicted on his
+      family; and the happiness of getting him back proved as dangerous an
+      excitement of feeling to his wife as her fears of the preceding night. She
+      kept silence and dared not question him, for when she did so on the
+      occasion of his first absence, he answered with an air of surprise:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Passions never deceive. Madame Claes&rsquo;s anxieties corroborated the rumors
+      she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her youth had
+      taught her to understand the polite pity of the world. Resolved not to
+      undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more into the privacy of
+      her own house, now deserted by society and even by her nearest friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the least
+      bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish life. At
+      first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar&rsquo;s valet,
+      Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing, but even
+      that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when Balthazar, unaware
+      of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of those that were
+      stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years, during
+      which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was apparently and
+      suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately reigned. Spanish by
+      race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within her when she discovered
+      her rival in a Science that allured her husband from her: torments of
+      jealousy preyed upon her heart and renewed her love. What could she do
+      against Science? Should she combat that tyrannous, unyielding, growing
+      power? Could she kill an invisible rival? Could a woman, limited by
+      nature, contend with an Idea whose delights are infinite, whose
+      attractions are ever new? How make head against the fascination of ideas
+      that spring the fresher and the lovelier out of difficulty, and entice a
+      man so far from this world that he forgets even his dearest loves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last one day, in spite of Balthazar&rsquo;s strict orders, Madame Claes
+      resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his life
+      was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing her
+      husband&rsquo;s labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible mistress.
+      She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory of
+      seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier alone had
+      that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent his
+      witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the outset,
+      she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of the way. For
+      a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with angry
+      impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her&mdash;all that
+      her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
+      servant was preferred to a wife!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
+      the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar&rsquo;s anger. She had
+      hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
+      roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be praised! you are still alive!&rdquo; he cried, raising her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
+      husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I forbade you to come here,&rdquo; he said, sitting down on the
+      stairs, as though prostrated. &ldquo;The saints have saved your life! By what
+      chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
+      just escaped death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I might have been happy!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My experiment has failed,&rdquo; continued Balthazar. &ldquo;You alone could I
+      forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+      nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Decompose nitrogen!&rdquo; said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
+      and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have a
+      general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is for a
+      woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves. More
+      forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when the
+      language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from letting
+      us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain as gladly
+      as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in love than
+      men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed
+      her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival
+      might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who
+      loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification like this
+      only proved Madame Claes&rsquo;s powerlessness and humiliated the feelings by
+      which she lived. She was ignorant; and she had reached a point where her
+      ignorance parted her from her husband. Worse than all, last and keenest
+      torture, he was risking his life, he was often in danger&mdash;near her,
+      yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know, his peril. Her
+      position became, like hell, a moral prison from which there was no issue,
+      in which there was no hope. Madame Claes resolved to know at least the
+      outward attractions of this fatal science, and she began secretly to study
+      chemistry in the books. From this time the family became, as it were,
+      cloistered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon the
+      family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which we find
+      it at the moment when this history begins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate women,
+      Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+      considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+      reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+      without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+      francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the transaction,
+      the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame Claes,
+      naturally much alarmed, to question her husband&rsquo;s notary and, disregarding
+      her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him guess them,
+      and even ask her the humiliating question,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Happily, the notary was almost a relation,&mdash;in this wise: The
+      grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the
+      same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the latter,
+      though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins. Monsieur Pierquin,
+      a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded to his
+      father&rsquo;s practice, was the only person who now had access to the House of
+      Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude
+      that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the
+      disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well known
+      throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that her husband
+      owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him with
+      chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and credit
+      of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies without
+      hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became due.
+      Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the chemicals
+      that had been furnished to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers of
+      chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which amounted
+      to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and Pierquin studied the
+      document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though some articles, entered
+      in commercial and scientific terms, were unintelligible to them, they were
+      frightened to see entries of precious metals and diamonds of all kinds,
+      though in small quantities. The large sum total of the debt was explained
+      by the multiplicity of the articles, by the precautions needed in
+      transporting some of them, more especially valuable machinery, by the
+      exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals, and finally by the cost of
+      instruments made to order after the designs of Monsieur Claes himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary had made inquiries, in his client&rsquo;s interest, as to Messieurs
+      Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was
+      sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur
+      Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results
+      obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.
+      Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases from
+      the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the whole
+      thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to the
+      very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the sum
+      borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which
+      Monsieur Claes was held. He then revealed the full extent of the evil,
+      telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her
+      husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the
+      patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value. As
+      for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his cousin,
+      with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had been
+      wholly unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was
+      working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two
+      years&mdash;one following the other with cumulative suffering&mdash;was
+      now added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.
+      Women have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do they
+      fear so much more than they hope in matters that concern the interests of
+      this life? Why is their faith given only to religious ideas of a future
+      existence? Why do they so ably foresee the catastrophes of fortune and the
+      crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment which unites them to the men they
+      love gives them a sense by which they weigh force, measure faculties,
+      understand tastes, passions, vices, virtues. The perpetual study of these
+      causes in the midst of which they live gives them, no doubt, the fatal
+      power of foreseeing effects in all possible relations of earthly life.
+      What they see of the present enables them to judge of the future with an
+      intuitive ability explained by the perfection of their nervous system,
+      which allows them to seize the lightest indications of thought and
+      feeling. Their whole being vibrates in communion with great moral
+      convulsions. Either they feel, or they see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame Claes
+      foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the deliberate
+      ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of Balthazar; if it
+      were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he was capable of
+      throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute indifference. But
+      what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal feeling and conjugal
+      love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman that the children,
+      equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come between them. Suddenly
+      she found herself at times more mother than wife, though hitherto she had
+      been more wife than mother. However ready she had been to sacrifice her
+      fortune and even her children to the man who had chosen her, loved her,
+      adored her, and to whom she was still the only woman in the world, the
+      remorse she felt for the weakness of her maternal love threw her into
+      terrible alternations of feeling. As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a
+      mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+      sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be
+      guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach him
+      for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness he had
+      shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his purposes? And yet
+      her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the law, told her that
+      parents were the depositaries and guardians of property, and possessed no
+      right to alienate the material welfare of the children. To escape replying
+      to such stern questions she preferred to shut her eyes, like one who
+      refuses to see the abyss into whose depths he knows he is about to fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+      household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+      ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed the family
+      on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the governess of her
+      children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly the luxury of
+      carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher families, so simple
+      were they in their habits, so proud in their feelings; no provision for
+      that modern innovation had therefore been made at the House of Claes, and
+      Balthazar was obliged to have his stable and coach-house in a building
+      opposite to his own house: his present occupations allowed him no time to
+      superintend that portion of his establishment, which belongs exclusively
+      to men. Madame Claes suppressed the whole expense of equipages and
+      servants, which her present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary,
+      and she did so without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any
+      pretext. So far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for
+      the future was more becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of
+      living called for no explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any
+      one who lives up to his income is considered a madman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+      birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and to
+      place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the Molinas,
+      the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days before the one on
+      which this story opens, the money derived from the sale of the diamonds
+      had been exhausted. On the very day, at three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon, as
+      Madame Claes was taking her children to vespers, she met Pierquin, who was
+      on his way to see her, and who turned and accompanied her to the church,
+      talking in a low voice of her situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;unless I fail in the friendship which binds me
+      to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position, nor
+      refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can hold
+      him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from the
+      mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he has
+      borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance of
+      safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
+      thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
+      them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
+      retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become of
+      you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
+      dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the house,
+      and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, &lsquo;The devil!&rsquo; It was the
+      first sign of reason I have known him show for three years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes pressed the notary&rsquo;s arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
+      &ldquo;Keep it secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
+      pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between her
+      children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her mind
+      was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The Spanish
+      sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her soul with a peal
+      louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was accomplished! Between
+      them and their father&rsquo;s honor she must no longer hesitate. The necessity
+      of a coming struggle with her husband terrified her; in her eyes he was so
+      great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of his anger made her tremble
+      as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must now depart from the
+      submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The interests of her
+      children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished tastes, the man
+      she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to common matters from the
+      higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from a smiling future and
+      plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists and great men? To her,
+      Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big with glory; he could
+      only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty hope. Then too, was he
+      not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk with such good sense on every
+      subject that he must be sincere when he declared he worked for the glory
+      and prosperity of his family. His love for his wife and family was not
+      only vast, it was infinite. That feeling could not be extinct; it was
+      magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into the
+      ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show him the
+      sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when he was
+      listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his love for her
+      would lessen! If she had had no children, she would bravely and joyously
+      have welcomed the new destiny her husband was making for her. Women who
+      are brought up in opulence are quick to feel the emptiness of material
+      enjoyments; and when their hearts, more wearied than withered, have once
+      learned the happiness of a constant interchange of real feelings, they
+      feel no shrinking from reduced outward circumstances, provided they are
+      still acceptable to the man who has loved them. Their wishes, their
+      pleasures, are subordinated to the caprices of that other life outside of
+      their own; to them the only dreadful future is to lose him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her true
+      life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And thus,
+      when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the deep
+      armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her children,
+      directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a message to her
+      husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished to see him. But
+      although the old valet did his best to make his master leave the
+      laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus gained time
+      for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to the hour nor the
+      light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs that could not be paid
+      renewed her past anguish and joined it to that of the present and the
+      future. This influx of painful interests, ideas, and feelings overcame
+      her, and she wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression of
+      his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more distracted than
+      she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she was magnetized for a
+      moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied of all expression, by the
+      consuming ideas that issued as if distilled from that bald brow. Under the
+      shock of this impression she wished to die. But when she heard the callous
+      voice, uttering a scientific wish at the moment when her heart was
+      breaking, her courage came back to her; she resolved to struggle with that
+      awful power which had torn a lover from her arms, a father from her
+      children, a fortune from their home, happiness from all. And yet she could
+      not repress a trepidation which made her quiver; in all her life no such
+      solemn scene as this had taken place. This dreadful moment&mdash;did it
+      not virtually contain her future, and gather within it all the past?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies the
+      smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily before the
+      masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the rush of thoughts
+      that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the feelings under the
+      weight of which her heart was crushed as her husband slowly crossed the
+      room towards the garden-door. Most women know that agony of inward
+      deliberation in which Madame Claes was writhing. Even one whose heart has
+      been tried by nothing worse than the declaration to a husband of some
+      extravagance, or a debt to a dress-maker, will understand how its pulses
+      swell and quicken when the matter is one of life itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband&rsquo;s
+      feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief; but to Madame
+      Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears. When she saw
+      Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards him;
+      then a cruel thought restrained her&mdash;she should stand before him!
+      would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the
+      glamour of love&mdash;who might see true? She resolved to avoid all
+      dangerous chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a
+      clear voice,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balthazar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his wife,
+      he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at intervals
+      along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium, and spat in
+      it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never forgot the
+      inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine, unable to find a
+      reason for this singularity, the constant care which her husband took of
+      the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable pang, but at this
+      moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside herself and made her
+      exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed her wounded feelings,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, I am speaking to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting a
+      look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like a
+      thunderbolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me, my friend,&rdquo; she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and put
+      out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back. &ldquo;I am
+      dying!&rdquo; she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid reaction
+      of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this attack.
+      Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door upon the
+      little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden staircase
+      that his wife&rsquo;s dress having caught on the jaws of one of the griffins
+      that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off with a loud
+      noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their chambers, but
+      the door of Josephine&rsquo;s bedroom was locked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, &ldquo;My God! the key,
+      where is the key?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, dear friend,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. &ldquo;This is
+      the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+      heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; cried Claes, &ldquo;the key!&mdash;here come the servants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+      waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and left
+      the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving them
+      orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, my dear life?&rdquo; he said, sitting down beside her, and taking
+      her hand and kissing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;now,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I suffer no longer. Only, I would I
+      had the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why gold?&rdquo; he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+      kissed her once more upon the forehead. &ldquo;Do you not give me the greatest
+      of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+      your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I see
+      that you are still the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What anguish do you speak of, dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, we are ruined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruined!&rdquo; he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding it
+      within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard: &ldquo;To-morrow,
+      dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless. Yesterday, in searching
+      for a far more important secret, I think I found the means of
+      crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear wife! in a
+      few days&rsquo; time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness&mdash;I am
+      forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be
+      indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are full
+      of you&mdash;of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, enough!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;let us talk of it all to-night, dear friend.
+      I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night,&rdquo; he resumed; &ldquo;yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+      into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave my
+      work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of the
+      heart&mdash;Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, you cannot understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+      studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read Fourcroy,
+      Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Spallanzani,
+      Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,&mdash;in fact, all the books about the science
+      you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall understand you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you are indeed an angel,&rdquo; cried Balthazar, falling at her feet, and
+      shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. &ldquo;Yes, we will
+      understand each other in all things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I would throw myself into those hellish fires which heat
+      your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you thus.&rdquo;
+       Then, hearing her daughter&rsquo;s step in the anteroom, she sprang quickly
+      forward. &ldquo;What is it, Marguerite?&rdquo; she said to her eldest daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to dinner we
+      need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them to
+      the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+      ante-chamber as she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be complete,&rdquo;
+       she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch expression on her
+      face. &ldquo;My friend, go into your own room; do me the kindness to dress for
+      dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off this ragged clothing; see
+      those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric acid which left these yellow
+      edges to the holes? Make yourself young again,&mdash;I will send you
+      Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication, forgetting
+      that it was locked on his side. He went out through the anteroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I don&rsquo;t
+      want Martha,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a joyous
+      action, exclaiming: &ldquo;Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are in your
+      muslin gown and that pink sash!&rdquo; Then he kissed her forehead and pressed
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, papa has kissed me!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, running into her mother&rsquo;s
+      room. &ldquo;He seems so joyous, so happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for
+      the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object
+      of his search. This day is a festival for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear mamma,&rdquo; replied Marguerite, &ldquo;we shall not be alone in our joy,
+      for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put
+      on another sash, this is faded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the parlor, playing with Jean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are Gabriel and Felicie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear them in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father
+      has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look at
+      them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in
+      dressing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children through
+      the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw that they
+      were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted with gold,
+      commonly called &ldquo;darning-needles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be good, my darlings,&rdquo; she said, raising the lower sash of the window and
+      leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door of
+      communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+      abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in joyous
+      tones:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have
+      supposed her lame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When monsieur carried madame upstairs,&rdquo; said the old valet, whom she met
+      on the staircase, &ldquo;he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke the jaw
+      of that griffin; I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know who can put it on again. There&rsquo;s
+      our staircase ruined&mdash;and it used to be so handsome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don&rsquo;t have it mended at all&mdash;it is
+      not a misfortune,&rdquo; said his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened?&rdquo; thought Lemulquinier; &ldquo;why isn&rsquo;t it a
+      misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin,&rdquo; said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
+      that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+      Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of exchange
+      upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Stay and dine with
+      us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext, I
+      entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about it. All
+      is well,&rdquo; she added, noticing the lawyer&rsquo;s surprise. &ldquo;In a few months my
+      husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked at
+      Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden followed by
+      Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+      moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
+      lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
+      with a pretended air of indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
+      good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
+      pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
+      called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
+      and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce from
+      the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his habitual
+      custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to indicate depth of
+      character, while in fact they merely concealed the shallow insignificance
+      of a notary busied exclusively with earthly interests; though he was still
+      young enough to feel envy. To marry into the family of Claes would have
+      been to him an object of extreme desire, if an instinct of avarice had not
+      underlain it. He could seem generous, but for all that he was a keen
+      reckoner. And thus, without explaining to himself the motive for his
+      change of manner, his behavior was harsh, peremptory, and surly, like that
+      of an ordinary business man, when he thought the Claes were ruined;
+      accommodating, affectionate, and almost servile, when he saw reason to
+      believe in a happy issue to his cousin&rsquo;s labors. Sometimes he beheld an
+      infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might aspire;
+      then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned to make her
+      his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without malevolence,
+      not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness
+      which rendered all his better qualities incomplete, while certain
+      absurdities of manner spoiled his personal appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to
+      her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the
+      change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed
+      its meaning and tried to read her daughter&rsquo;s mind by a penetrating glance,
+      seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young girl&rsquo;s
+      manner showed complete indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics of
+      the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where his
+      wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his boots
+      as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man, and
+      foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation of his
+      appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs. Balthazar
+      entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly polished
+      top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk stockings to
+      appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons, a flowered white
+      waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his beard, combed and
+      perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his hands, all with such
+      care that he was scarcely recognizable to those who had seen him lately.
+      Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the
+      notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous
+      and affable presence was full of its former attractions. The weariness and
+      suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to the
+      bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-evening, Pierquin,&rdquo; said Monsieur Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+      wife&rsquo;s lap and tossed him in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See that little fellow!&rdquo; he exclaimed to the notary. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t such a
+      pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+      Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!&rdquo; he
+      cried, tossing Jean into the air; &ldquo;down, down! up! down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the ceiling
+      and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she might not
+      betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,&mdash;simple
+      apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see how you can walk,&rdquo; said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+      floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold buttons
+      which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a darling!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, kissing him; &ldquo;you are a Claes, you
+      walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?&rdquo; he said to his eldest
+      son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. &ldquo;Are you struggling valiantly
+      with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp hold of
+      mathematics?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+      that characterized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Pierquin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;perhaps you have something to say to me.&rdquo; He
+      took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, &ldquo;Come and see my tulips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to repress
+      the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable, so truly
+      himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed her,
+      exclaiming:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+      to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is long since I have seen my father so kind,&rdquo; answered the young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his
+      arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next
+      room, the whole family following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with
+      paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken
+      side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of
+      family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs of
+      game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully arranged
+      here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage of strange
+      birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which evidently had not
+      been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the
+      square shape with twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed
+      stuff, common to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of
+      the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the
+      gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to
+      time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this room.
+      The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful antique
+      lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The glasses were
+      those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen in the pictures of
+      the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of faience, decorated with
+      raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the
+      English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware was massive, with square
+      sides and designs in high relief,&mdash;genuine family plate, whose
+      pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and chasing, showed the
+      beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards fortune of the Claes
+      family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion altogether Spanish; and as for
+      the linen, it will readily be supposed that the Claes&rsquo;s household made it
+      a point of honor to possess the best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for the
+      daily use of the family. The front house, where the social entertainments
+      were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels, being reserved for
+      great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost to things which are, as
+      it were, made common by daily use. Here, in the home quarter, everything
+      bore the impress of patriarchal use and simplicity. And&mdash;for a final
+      and delightful detail&mdash;a vine grew outside the house between the
+      windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about the casements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are faithful to the old traditions, madame,&rdquo; said Pierquin, as he
+      received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+      Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread. &ldquo;This
+      is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle des
+      Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup of the
+      Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of Tournai
+      makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere else old
+      Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing; furniture is
+      made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets, lances, shields,
+      and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old
+      furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres
+      porcelain,&mdash;which does not compare with either old Dresden or with
+      Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I&rsquo;m Flemish to the core; my heart actually
+      bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture
+      for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact is, society wants
+      to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods
+      of art. When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously
+      done. During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the
+      Louvre. On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,&mdash;no
+      depth, no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on
+      their canvas. And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient school of
+      art! Ah, bah!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our old masters,&rdquo; replied Balthazar, &ldquo;studied the combination of colors
+      and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain. You
+      are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less
+      cultivated in these days than formerly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary&rsquo;s remark
+      that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the
+      brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she had
+      inherited from her brother,&mdash;hoping to be able thus to pay off the
+      thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes&rsquo;s mind
+      returned to the conversation, &ldquo;so they are discussing my work in Douai,
+      are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the notary, &ldquo;every one is asking what it is you spend so
+      much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a
+      man like you should be searching for the Philosopher&rsquo;s stone. I ventured
+      to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was
+      attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God&rsquo;s work out
+      of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man to
+      spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I
+      share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as
+      well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted
+      had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+      evil is to make me ridiculous,&rdquo; said Balthazar. &ldquo;Ha! so they think me
+      ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in
+      honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect my
+      dear townsmen bestow on wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+      forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+      brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his
+      tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his children,
+      and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and pertinence.
+      This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was certainly the truest
+      fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks and words expressed once
+      more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart which reveals to each a
+      delicious oneness of sentiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about the
+      table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of his secret
+      hopes. The sudden change in his master&rsquo;s ways was even more significant to
+      him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness he saw fortune.
+      While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come to share his
+      beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his master&rsquo;s researches
+      from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist when expected results
+      disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency of mankind towards
+      imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he
+      lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a
+      superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror, admiration, and
+      selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a lottery-office is to the
+      masses,&mdash;organized hope. Every night he went to bed saying to
+      himself, &ldquo;To-morrow we may float in gold&rdquo;; and every morning he woke with
+      a faith as firm as that of the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+      lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+      trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral
+      qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which
+      each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen
+      thread were called in Flanders, &ldquo;mulquiniers&rdquo;; and that no doubt was the
+      trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from a state
+      of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown misfortune had
+      again reduced his present descendant to the condition of a serf, with the
+      addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and its linen-trade was
+      epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of euphony, Mulquinier.
+      He was not without originality, either of character or appearance. His
+      face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and seamed by small-pox
+      which had left innumerable white and shining patches that gave him a
+      fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole demeanor solemn and
+      mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig which was smoothly
+      plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old valet&rsquo;s outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity
+      which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to his master, the
+      depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he maintained a
+      rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The denizens of the
+      rue de Paris watched him pass with an interest mingled with awe; to all
+      their questions he returned sibylline answers big with mysterious
+      treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he assumed an annoying
+      authority over his companions, employing it to further his own interests
+      and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler of the house.
+      Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply attached to the
+      families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for Balthazar. If any
+      trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event happened to the family,
+      he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer as phlegmatically as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in the
+      garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+      earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower
+      being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so arranged as
+      to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon&rsquo;s-head
+      tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named &ldquo;tulipa
+      Claesiana,&rdquo; combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal
+      looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar&rsquo;s father, who had frequently
+      refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions
+      against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant always in the
+      parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The stem was
+      enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions of the plant
+      were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose seven colors
+      were distinguishable from each other with the clearly defined brilliancy
+      which formerly gave such fabulous value to these dazzling plants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs&rsquo; worth of tulips,&rdquo;
+       said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the
+      many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty of
+      the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into jewels,
+      to observe the meaning of the notary&rsquo;s words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What good do they do you?&rdquo; continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar; &ldquo;you
+      ought to sell them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! am I in want of money?&rdquo; replied Claes, in the tone of a man to whom
+      forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence, during which the children made many
+      exclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See this one, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! here&rsquo;s a beauty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me the name of that one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a gulf for human reason to sound!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, raising his
+      hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. &ldquo;A compound of hydrogen
+      and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions, under the
+      same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold colors, each of
+      which constitutes a distinct result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so rapidly
+      that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as if remembering
+      that she had studied his favorite science, made her a mysterious sign,
+      saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not yet understand me, but you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am sure you do not understand him,&rdquo; said Pierquin, taking his
+      coffee from Marguerite&rsquo;s hand. &ldquo;The Ethiopian can&rsquo;t change his skin, nor
+      the leopard his spots,&rdquo; he whispered to Madame Claes. &ldquo;Have the goodness
+      to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn&rsquo;t draw him out of
+      his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+      kissed little Jean in his mother&rsquo;s arms, and retired with a low bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round
+      the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was
+      causing her by whispering in her ear,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew how to get rid of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him see
+      the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her forehead
+      against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go back into the parlor,&rdquo; she said, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games
+      for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not notice
+      two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past nine, when
+      Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after helping her
+      sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in the deep
+      armchair, and her father holding his wife&rsquo;s hand as he talked to her. The
+      young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire without
+      speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child.&rdquo; She drew her down, kissed
+      her tenderly on the forehead, and said, &ldquo;Carry your book into your own
+      room; but do not sit up too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, my darling daughter,&rdquo; said Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife
+      remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last
+      glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose
+      outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness. When
+      night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of emotion,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife&rsquo;s chamber
+      as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The good
+      housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of virtue. It was
+      to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic superstition,
+      rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender feelings, where
+      simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and sacred in social life.
+      Any woman in Madame Claes&rsquo;s position would have wished to gather about her
+      the elegances of life, but Josephine had done so with exquisite taste,
+      knowing well how great an influence the aspect of our surroundings exerts
+      upon the feelings of others. To a pretty creature it would have been mere
+      luxury, to her it was a necessity. No one better understood the meaning of
+      the saying, &ldquo;A pretty woman is self-created,&rdquo;&mdash;a maxim which guided
+      every action of Napoleon&rsquo;s first wife, and often made her false; whereas
+      Madame Claes was ever natural and true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Balthazar knew his wife&rsquo;s chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+      material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of soft
+      emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time. The
+      proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of the
+      tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously
+      placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose
+      effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The gleam
+      of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of pearl-gray
+      silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly distributed
+      here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors of the tulips,
+      which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret of this choice
+      arrangement&mdash;it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell him in
+      words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of her joys
+      and woes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad
+      thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The silken
+      coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that
+      penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully drawn,
+      betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound
+      of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered husband. Madame
+      Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was trimmed by a long
+      pelerine with falls of lace that came about her throat, and adorned with
+      her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely glossy and fell on either
+      side of her forehead like a raven&rsquo;s wing, went to draw the tapestry
+      portiere that hung before the door and allowed no sound to penetrate the
+      chamber from without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was sitting
+      near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive woman
+      whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives
+      expression to irresistible hopes. Woman&rsquo;s greatest charm lies in her
+      constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a weakness
+      which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments. Is not such
+      an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the rings of the
+      portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden rod, she turned
+      towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by
+      resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It
+      was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation
+      of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it
+      stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his
+      wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa. This was what she wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promised me,&rdquo; she said, taking his hand which she held between her
+      own magnetic palms, &ldquo;to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit, dear
+      friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage to study
+      a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to understand you.
+      I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how it happened, that
+      you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over night I had left you
+      happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+      coquettishly delightful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+      greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+      gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to me
+      not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to keep it
+      from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the women
+      in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while Science has
+      depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone. I hate all that
+      comes between us. If you win the glory for which you strive, I must be
+      unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I&mdash;I alone&mdash;should be the
+      giver of your happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that first
+      led me into this glorious path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man!&rdquo; she cried in terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in 1809?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I remember him!&rdquo; she exclaimed; &ldquo;I am often annoyed because my memory
+      still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals of hell,
+      those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped of hair, the
+      upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!&mdash;What awful impassiveness
+      in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any inn I would
+      never have allowed him to sleep here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That Polish gentleman,&rdquo; resumed Balthazar, &ldquo;was named Adam de
+      Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+      happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give up
+      the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I think, by
+      means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as adepts.
+      When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the captain gave a
+      start of surprise. &lsquo;Have you studied chemistry?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;With
+      Lavoisier,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;You are happy in being rich and free,&rsquo; he cried;
+      then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a man,&mdash;one of
+      those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the brain or in the
+      heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be expressed in words. He
+      ended his sentence with a look that startled me. After a pause, he told me
+      that Poland being at her last gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden. There he
+      had sought consolation for his country&rsquo;s fate in the study of chemistry,
+      for which he had always felt an irresistible vocation. &lsquo;And I see you
+      recognize as I do,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced
+      to powder, each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed,
+      the same qualitative result.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he
+      said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general
+      meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of
+      tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred my
+      very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the anvil. I
+      will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me like the
+      live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah&rsquo;s tongue; for my studies with
+      Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Monsieur,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;the parity of these three substances, in appearance
+      so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of nature ought to
+      have a single principle. The researches of modern chemistry prove the
+      truth of this law in the larger part of natural effects. Chemistry divides
+      creation into two distinct parts,&mdash;organic nature, and inorganic
+      nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all animal and vegetable
+      creations which show an organization more or less perfect,&mdash;or, to be
+      more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which gives more or less
+      sensibility,&mdash;is, undoubtedly, the more important part of our earth.
+      Now, analysis has reduced all the products of this nature to four simple
+      substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and
+      another simple substance, non-metallic and solid, carbon. Inorganic
+      nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of movement and sensation,
+      denied the power of growth (too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus),
+      possesses fifty-three simple substances, or elements, whose different
+      combinations make its products. Is it probable that means should be more
+      numerous where a lesser number of results are produced?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;My master&rsquo;s opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have one
+      originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the knowledge
+      of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to rediscover.
+      Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again; we have
+      chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would apparently then rest on
+      four essential principles,&mdash;in fact, if we could decompose nitrogen
+      which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but three. This
+      brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the ancients and of the
+      alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to scorn. Modern chemistry
+      is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet little,&mdash;much, because
+      the science has never recoiled before difficulty; little, in comparison
+      with what remains to be done. Chance has served her well, my noble
+      Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure carbon, the diamond,
+      seemingly the last substance possible to create? The old alchemists, who
+      thought that gold was decomposable and therefore creatable, shrank from
+      the idea of producing the diamond. Yet we have discovered the nature and
+      the law of its composition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;As for me,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;I have gone farther still. An experiment
+      proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+      mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which
+      lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first place, the
+      experiment itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic nature)
+      in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance). Sprinkle the
+      seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may reach the product
+      of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts from a known
+      environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis. Cut off the
+      stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity to produce
+      after burning them enough ashes for the experiment. Well, by analyzing
+      those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium, phosphate and
+      carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of
+      potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress had grown in
+      ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not exist in the
+      brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the cress, nor in
+      the distilled water with which the plant was nourished, whose composition
+      was known. But since they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we
+      can explain their presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of
+      a primary element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and
+      also to all those by which we environed it. Thus the air, the distilled
+      water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in the
+      cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one
+      common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;From this unimpeachable experiment,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I deduce the existence
+      of the Alkahest, the Absolute,&mdash;a substance common to all created
+      things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net meaning and
+      position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to be
+      solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine
+      humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,&mdash;the primary matter, the
+      medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all things
+      human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;It was at this point,&rsquo; he went on, &lsquo;that poverty put an end to my
+      researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of
+      your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to the
+      conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME
+      MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon. The
+      MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive electricity.
+      Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish those two
+      truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, monsieur!&rsquo; he cried, striking his brow, &lsquo;when I know that I carry
+      here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+      Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck
+      of men who fly at each other&rsquo;s throats at the word of command without
+      knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My body
+      comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and men; it
+      crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My soul has
+      no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged in one
+      idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,&mdash;for that
+      principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same
+      environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same
+      phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently
+      constituted exactly alike,&mdash;one produces yellow silk, another white;
+      and if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble
+      neither father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact surely
+      involves the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe
+      that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean worship
+      of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented Primal
+      Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the type of all
+      the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout all time has
+      symbolized God,&mdash;that is to say, Matter, Force, and Product,&mdash;are
+      they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some confused knowledge of
+      the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa, all the great Searchers
+      into occult causes took the Great Triad for their watchword,&mdash;in
+      other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise alchemy, that
+      transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is only carrying
+      onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had I found the
+      Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with Motion. Ah!
+      while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to their death,
+      my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards
+      the Absolute, while I&mdash;I shall die like a dog in the trenches!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a touching
+      tone of brotherhood, &lsquo;If I see cause for a great experiment I will
+      bequeath it to you before I die.&rsquo;&mdash;My Pepita,&rdquo; cried Balthazar,
+      taking his wife&rsquo;s hands, &ldquo;tears of anguish rolled down his hollow cheeks,
+      as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had timidly
+      recognized without daring to follow them out&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her husband,
+      &ldquo;that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to deprive us of
+      your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness of a family!
+      Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross? did you examine
+      him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye which sent forth
+      the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could have torn you from
+      me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor father, nor master of
+      your family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a piercing
+      glance at his wife, &ldquo;do you blame your husband for rising above the level
+      of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple of his glory,
+      as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your heart! Ah, my
+      Pepita,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you do not know what I have done. In these three years
+      I have made giant strides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+      fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and she
+      wept as she listened to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many substances
+      hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals. Why!&rdquo; he
+      continued, noticing that his wife wept, &ldquo;I have even decomposed tears.
+      Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin, and
+      water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted
+      Josephine&rsquo;s features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him with
+      outspread wings far away from material existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This analysis, my dear,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is one of the most convincing
+      proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+      According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its hearth
+      is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction of mineral
+      bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case combustion is
+      nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner, again, vegetables,
+      which are constantly revived by combinations producing dampness, live
+      indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain vegetables which existed
+      before the period of the last cataclysm. But each time that nature has
+      perfected an organism and then, for some unknown reason, has introduced
+      into it sensation, instinct, or intelligence (three marked stages of the
+      organic system), these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose
+      activity is in direct proportion to the result obtained. Man, who
+      represents the highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only
+      organism by which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative&mdash;namely,
+      THOUGHT&mdash;is, among all zoological creations, the one in which
+      combustion is found in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may
+      in fact be seen to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and
+      carbonates which a man&rsquo;s body reveals to our analysis. May not these
+      substances be traces left within him of the passage of the electric fluid
+      which is the principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity
+      manifest itself by a greater variety of compounds in him than in any other
+      animal? Should not he have faculties above those of all other created
+      beings for the purpose of absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute
+      principle? and may he not assimilate that principle so as to produce, in
+      some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a
+      retort. In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little
+      phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too
+      much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of
+      genius is saturated to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the
+      street-porter, the dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the
+      force resulting from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our
+      feelings&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my love&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+      Conceive if I&mdash;I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his face
+      rose by degrees to inspiration. &ldquo;I shall make metals,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I shall
+      make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you be the happier?&rdquo; she asked in despair. &ldquo;Accursed science!
+      accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
+      sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! oh! God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He denies Him!&rdquo; she cried, wringing her hands. &ldquo;Claes, God wields a power
+      that you can never gain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he looked
+      at his wife and trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What power?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Primal force&mdash;motion,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;This is what I learn from the
+      books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+      Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
+      like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to them.
+      You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them, can you
+      combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga wine? Will
+      you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the atmosphere of
+      Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will nothing stop him?&rdquo; cried Pepita. &ldquo;Oh! my love, my love! it is
+      killed! I have lost him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity of
+      the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than ever
+      through her tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she resumed in a broken voice, &ldquo;you are dead to all. I see it but
+      too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self; it bears
+      you to heights from which you will return no more to be the companion of a
+      poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would fain believe, as
+      a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you to make manifest
+      his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within your breast the
+      irresistible power that has mastered you&mdash;But no; God is good; he
+      would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores you, of the
+      children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone who is helping
+      you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness,
+      where the light of faith does not guide you,&mdash;nothing guides you but
+      a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it otherwise, would you not
+      have seen that you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three
+      years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth! I reproach you not; were
+      we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, &lsquo;Take it,
+      fling it into your furnace, turn it into smoke&rsquo;; and I should laugh to see
+      it float away in vapor. Were you poor, I would beg without shame for the
+      coal to light your furnace. Oh! could my body yield your hateful Alkahest,
+      I would fling myself upon those fires with joy, since your glory, your
+      delight is in that unfound secret. But our children, Claes, our children!
+      what will become of them if you do not soon discover this hellish thing?
+      Do you know why Pierquin came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs,
+      which you owe and cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I
+      might spare you the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must
+      sell our family silver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw her husband&rsquo;s eyes grow moist, and she flung herself despairingly
+      at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+      economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+      hereafter,&mdash;if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+      condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you, do
+      not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them, Science
+      may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a wretched life
+      in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood has sometimes been too
+      weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes wished I were not a
+      mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your life! And now, to stifle
+      my remorse, must I plead the cause of my children before you, and not my
+      own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth
+      her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her rival.
+      Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I caused you such grief?&rdquo; he said, in the tone of a man waking from
+      a painful dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,&rdquo;
+       she said, passing her hand over his hair. &ldquo;Sit here beside me,&rdquo; she
+      continued, pointing to the sofa. &ldquo;Ah! I can forget it all now, now that
+      you come back to us; all can be repaired&mdash;but you will not abandon me
+      again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman&rsquo;s
+      influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the
+      happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You
+      may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a
+      little for your good. I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.
+      Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love Chemistry better than you love
+      us. Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart;
+      but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half. Tell me, is not my
+      disinterestedness sublime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+      carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where women
+      reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently contracted
+      and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was habitual to
+      it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth of a love
+      which was once her glory, the full return of a power she thought she had
+      lost, she said to him with a smile:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may wish us
+      to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal
+      disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of looking into
+      futurity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+      poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based on
+      invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds class
+      as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The prophet sees
+      and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare and too obscure
+      to be subjected to analysis or observation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this,&rdquo; she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she had
+      so unfortunately reawakened, &ldquo;what you call an affinity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are neutral,
+      they produce no reaction&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! hush, hush,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you will make me die of grief. I can never
+      bear to see my rival in the transports of your love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of my
+      family. You are the basis of all my hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, look me in the eyes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole person
+      Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and muslin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I fall
+      back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must drag me
+      from them; I desire it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,&mdash;a
+      hand that was both strong and delicate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ask more,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all,&rdquo; he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science,&rdquo; she said, with
+      fire in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it&mdash;let Chemistry go to the devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This moment effaces all!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Make me suffer now, if you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears came to Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes, as he heard these words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were right, love,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have seen you through a veil; I have
+      not understood you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it concerned only me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;willingly would I have suffered in
+      silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign. But your
+      sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate your
+      property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world
+      will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But
+      surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that his wife has
+      shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of this no more,&rdquo; she
+      cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. &ldquo;To-night, my Claes, let us
+      not be less than happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family, Balthazar,
+      from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as to the
+      cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did not enter his
+      laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to move into the
+      country, where they stayed for more than two months, only returning to
+      town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes determined to give, as in
+      former years, to commemorate his wedding-day. He now began by degrees to
+      obtain proof of the disorder which his experiments and his indifference
+      had brought into his business affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+      continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+      servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+      Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named Martha,
+      who had never left her mistress since the latter left her convent. It was
+      of course impossible to give a fete to the whole society of Douai with so
+      few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all difficulties by proposing to
+      send to Paris for a cook, to train the gardener&rsquo;s son as a waiter, and to
+      borrow Pierquin&rsquo;s manservant. Thus the pinched circumstances of the family
+      passed unnoticed by the community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+      cleverly able to outwit her husband&rsquo;s listlessness. She commissioned him
+      to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand staircase,
+      the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque to order one
+      of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the burgher tables in the
+      northern departments. A fete like that the Claes were about to give is a
+      serious affair, involving thought and care and active correspondence, in a
+      land where traditions of hospitality put the family honor so much at stake
+      that to servants as well as masters a grand dinner is like a victory won
+      over the guests. Oysters arrived from Ostend, grouse were imported from
+      Scotland, fruits came from Paris; in short, not the smallest accessory was
+      lacking to the hereditary luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The government
+      of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary fete of the Claes
+      usually opened the winter season and set the fashion to the neighborhood.
+      For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it a distinguished
+      occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was talked of throughout
+      a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes, the guests, the
+      smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the events that took place,
+      were discussed far and wide. These preparations now prevented Claes from
+      thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest. Since his return to social
+      life and domestic bliss, the servant of science had recovered his
+      self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the master of a household, and he now
+      took pleasure in the thought of surprising the whole country. He resolved
+      to give a special character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he
+      chose, among all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and
+      the most fleeting,&mdash;he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of
+      rare plants and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of luxury,
+      and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the Twenty-ninth Bulletin
+      and the news of the terrible disasters of the grand army in Russia, and at
+      the passage of the Beresina, were made known on the afternoon of the
+      appointed day. A sincere and profound grief was felt in Douai, and those
+      who were present at the fete, moved by a natural feeling of patriotism,
+      unanimously declined to dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
+      from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote, from
+      wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his promise,
+      and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the subject of
+      the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their meeting. The
+      letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did honor to his
+      patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this festal day
+      brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the House of Claes
+      shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite of its
+      magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands of six
+      generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+      occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
+      the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially by
+      the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of her
+      home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters of that
+      country loved to represent,&mdash;the head perfectly rounded and full,
+      chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow, gray
+      eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness which did
+      not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the high square brow
+      an expression of firmness, hidden at present under an apparent calmness
+      and docility. Without being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little
+      natural enjoyment. Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief
+      expressions of Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that
+      seemed cold at first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain
+      grace of outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic
+      happiness. By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet
+      explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was the
+      living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges,
+      whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters forbade
+      the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the
+      pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however, retired early; only
+      the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the
+      intimate friends of the family. Little by little the brilliantly lighted
+      house, to which all the notabilities of Douai had flocked, sank into
+      silence, and by one o&rsquo;clock in the morning the great gallery was deserted,
+      the lights were extinguished in one salon after another, and the
+      court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant, grew dark and gloomy,&mdash;prophetic
+      image of the future that lay before the family. When the Claes returned to
+      their own appartement, Balthazar gave his wife the letter he had received
+      from the Polish officer: Josephine returned it with a mournful gesture;
+      she foresaw the coming doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the weariness
+      and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after the family
+      breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little Jean, and talked
+      to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or embroidery or
+      lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the talk, and seemed at
+      last to get through with them as a duty. When his wife came down again
+      after dressing, she always found him sitting in an easy-chair looking
+      blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite undisturbed by the rattle of
+      their bobbins. When the newspaper was brought in, he read it slowly like a
+      retired merchant at a loss how to kill the time. Then he would get up,
+      look at the sky through the window panes, go back to his chair and mend
+      the fire drearily, as though he were deprived of all consciousness of his
+      own movements by the tyranny of ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It was
+      difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any length of
+      time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who have said
+      everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects of interest
+      outside the life of the heart, or the life of material existence. The life
+      of the heart has its own moments of expansion which need some stimulus to
+      bring them forth; discussions of material life cannot long occupy superior
+      minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the mere gossip of society is
+      intolerable to loving natures. Consequently, two isolated beings who know
+      each other thoroughly ought to seek their enjoyments in the higher regions
+      of thought; for it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the
+      immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has
+      accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable,
+      unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless
+      simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such charming
+      children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human phenomenon among
+      those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and comprehend all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+      critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+      suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never been
+      able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she ended by
+      mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of his
+      daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources were,
+      however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine&rsquo;s relation to
+      Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis XIV.; she had to
+      amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or the wiles of a
+      court which could play comedies like the sham embassies from the King of
+      Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues of France, Louis
+      XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the expedients of a
+      family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst of his grandeur he
+      felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had rocked the cradles of his
+      children was often at her wit&rsquo;s end to rock his, or soothe the monarch now
+      suffering from his misuse of men and things, of life and God. Claes, on
+      the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the clutch of a
+      single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of treasures for the
+      human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as artists suffer in the
+      grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the pillars of the temple. The
+      result was the same for the two sovereigns; though the intellectual
+      monarch was crushed by his inward force, the other by his weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+      nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her, she
+      called society to the rescue, and gave two &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; every week. Cafes at
+      Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which, during a
+      whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and liqueurs which
+      overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the Flemish dainties
+      and took their &ldquo;cafe noir&rdquo; or their &ldquo;cafe au lait frappe,&rdquo; while the women
+      sang ballads, discussed each other&rsquo;s toilettes, and related the gossip of
+      the day. It was a living picture by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed
+      gray hats, the scarlet plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth
+      century. And yet, Balthazar&rsquo;s efforts to play the part of host, his
+      constrained courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a
+      state of languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward
+      ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased it.
+      Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they
+      retarded Claes&rsquo;s fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though he never
+      spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for the
+      promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have the
+      melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick person. The
+      ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner with which he
+      picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the fire with bits of
+      coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When night came he was
+      evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from the importunities of
+      thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter another day,&mdash;seeming
+      to measure time as the tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to
+      cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see
+      the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings of the
+      mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the heart. She
+      dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to the laughter of
+      little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air of a man absorbed in
+      secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw him shake off his
+      melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem cheerful, that he might
+      not distress others. The little coquetries of the father with his
+      daughters, or his games with little Jean, moistened the eyes of the poor
+      wife, who often left the room to hide the feelings that heroic effort
+      caused her,&mdash;a heroism the cost of which is well understood by women,
+      a generosity that well-nigh breaks their heart. At such times Madame Claes
+      longed to say, &ldquo;Kill me, and do what you will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes lost their fire and took the glaucous
+      opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His attentions to his
+      wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing, grew heavy and inert.
+      These symptoms became more marked towards the end of April, terrifying
+      Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now intolerable, and who had all along
+      reproached herself a thousand times while she admired the Flemish loyalty
+      which kept her husband faithful to his promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+      hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring him
+      back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear friend,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I release you from your promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are thinking of your researches, are you not?&rdquo; she continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from remonstrating,
+      Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss into which they were
+      about to fall together, took his hand and pressed it, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+      than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+      sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave me,
+      to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those jewels
+      for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead; and,
+      besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer diamonds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The joy that suddenly lighted her husband&rsquo;s face was like a death-knell to
+      the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man&rsquo;s passion was stronger than
+      himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him to walk without
+      faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge of a precipice. For
+      him faith, for her doubt,&mdash;for her the heavier burden: does not the
+      woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to believe in his
+      success, that she might justify to herself her connivance in the probable
+      wreck of their fortunes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion, Pepita,&rdquo;
+       said Claes, deeply moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered the
+      room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes and
+      remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children, whose future
+      she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the contrary, took
+      them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to give vent to the
+      joy that choked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband. The
+      future of her children, their father&rsquo;s credit, were two motives as
+      powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+      were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+      unhappy woman never knew another hour&rsquo;s peace of mind. The demon of
+      Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now agitated
+      her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation, and sat
+      half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed by the
+      very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those of
+      Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit and
+      aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for compliance
+      with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the Church, she
+      would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with terror at the
+      chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an expression of
+      despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in
+      her heart and mind. She beheld her children&rsquo;s future fleeing in that
+      smoke, but&mdash;was she not saving their father&rsquo;s life? was it not her
+      first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but even
+      this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings were too
+      keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or seemed at times
+      annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went through paroxysms of
+      jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the building,&mdash;a living
+      death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to her a species of
+      barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the breakfast-table or the
+      dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar&rsquo;s experiments were satisfactory,
+      and there were prospects of a coming success; if, on the other hand, the
+      man were morose and gloomy, she looked at him and trembled,&mdash;Balthazar
+      must surely be dissatisfied. Mistress and valet ended by understanding
+      each other, notwithstanding the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant
+      submission of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the
+      poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair
+      which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of the
+      mother trembling for her children. She now practised the doleful silence
+      which formerly chilled her heart, not observing the gloom that pervaded
+      the house, where whole days went by in that melancholy parlor without a
+      smile, often without a word. Led by sad maternal foresight, she trained
+      her daughters to household work, and tried to make them skilful in womanly
+      employments, that they might have the means of living if destitution came.
+      The outward calm of this quiet home covered terrible agitations. Towards
+      the end of the summer Balthazar had used the money derived from the
+      diamonds, and was twenty thousand francs in debt to Messieurs Protez and
+      Chiffreville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+      begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+      unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without result as
+      to the real object of his researches. There came a day when he ended the
+      whole series of experiments, and the sense of his impotence crushed him;
+      the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted enormous sums of money drove
+      him to despair. It was a frightful catastrophe. He left the garret,
+      descended slowly to the parlor, and threw himself into a chair in the
+      midst of his children, remaining motionless for some minutes as though
+      dead, making no answer to the questions his wife pressed upon him. Tears
+      came at last to his relief, and he rushed to his own chamber that no one
+      might witness his despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone with
+      her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man, these
+      broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the husband
+      and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past sufferings. The
+      victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said to her in a tone of
+      dreadful conviction: &ldquo;I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of my
+      children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill myself,&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband&rsquo;s nature enough to
+      fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an inward convulsion,
+      disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized her, and was all the
+      more dangerous because she controlled its violent effects beneath a
+      deceptive calm of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
+      does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin, but
+      an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de Solis, my
+      confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from ruin. He came
+      to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is enough to pay
+      the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all that you owe to
+      Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an account against
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
+      now white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam; they
+      have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus, to display
+      a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families: he thinks they
+      will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can recover our
+      independence, and out of the purchase money, which will amount to over one
+      hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to continue the experiments.
+      Your daughters and I will be content with very little; we can fill up the
+      empty frames with other pictures in course of time and by economy;
+      meantime you will be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+      mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector of
+      the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
+      Pepita&rsquo;s, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
+      convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
+      with a nervous shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dared not tell you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that between me and the Unconditioned,
+      the Absolute, scarcely a hair&rsquo;s breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
+      only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
+      centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,&mdash;in short, in a
+      vacuum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
+      passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices&mdash;she received a problem
+      in chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to the
+      parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened daughters, and
+      burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her hands, kneeling one on
+      each side of her, not knowing the cause of her grief, and asking at
+      intervals, &ldquo;Mother, what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor children, I am dying; I feel it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer struck home to Marguerite&rsquo;s heart; she saw, for the first time
+      on her mother&rsquo;s face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which only comes
+      on olive-tinted skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martha, Martha!&rdquo; cried Felicie, &ldquo;come quickly; mamma wants you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the livid
+      hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in Spanish,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Body of Christ! madame is dying!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+      footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha,&rdquo; said her
+      mistress. &ldquo;My poor dear girls,&rdquo; she added, pressing Marguerite and Felicie
+      to her heart with a despairing action; &ldquo;I wish I could live long enough to
+      see you married and happy. Martha,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;tell Lemulquinier to
+      go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name to come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha, both
+      devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their own
+      affections. Martha&rsquo;s dreadful announcement,&mdash;&ldquo;Madame is dying;
+      monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,&rdquo;&mdash;forced
+      certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier. He,
+      cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before one of
+      the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the boudoir of
+      a fine lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew how it would end,&rdquo; said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+      mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing himself
+      by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders, which
+      made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at Lemulquinier,
+      which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes made almost
+      venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a motion worthy of
+      Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large mouth with bread and
+      butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,&rdquo; he
+      said; &ldquo;and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold. There&rsquo;s not
+      the thickness of a farthing between us and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don&rsquo;t you give &lsquo;em
+      to monsieur? he&rsquo;s your master, and if you are so sure of his doings&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans, and
+      heat the water,&rdquo; remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+      silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up; and
+      if you are allowed to have your way, you&rsquo;ll make ducks and drakes of
+      everything till there&rsquo;s nothing left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And monsieur,&rdquo; added Martha, entering the kitchen, &ldquo;will kill madame,
+      just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won&rsquo;t let him swallow up
+      everything he&rsquo;s got. He&rsquo;s possessed by the devil; anybody can see that.
+      You don&rsquo;t risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you haven&rsquo;t
+      got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when we are all in
+      such distress; the young ladies are crying like two Magdalens. Go and
+      fetch Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe de Solis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the laboratory
+      in order,&rdquo; said the valet. &ldquo;Besides, it&rsquo;s too far&mdash;go yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just hear the brute!&rdquo; cried Martha. &ldquo;Pray who is to give madame her
+      foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mulquinier,&rdquo; said Marguerite, coming into the servants&rsquo; hall, which
+      adjoined the kitchen, &ldquo;on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call at
+      Dr. Pierquin&rsquo;s house and ask him to come here at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! you&rsquo;ve got to go now,&rdquo; said Josette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order,&rdquo; said
+      Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a despotic
+      air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then descending
+      the stairs, &ldquo;can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;re forced to go, you old barbarian!&rdquo; cried Martha, as she heard
+      Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter&rsquo;s bidding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the family
+      whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two women and
+      Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of increasing the
+      loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the future
+      of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor in
+      misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine&rsquo;s
+      condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+      pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He saw
+      them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor, too weak
+      to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed abstractedly
+      at his daughters now attending on their mother, without inquiring the
+      cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or Jean attempted to
+      speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to Balthazar. Such a
+      scene was of a nature to make a young girl think; and Marguerite, placed
+      as she was between her father and mother, was old enough and sensible
+      enough to weigh their conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+      children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame Claes
+      foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar impelled her to
+      justify in Marguerite&rsquo;s eyes conduct that might, to the upright mind of a
+      girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The very respect which she
+      showed at this moment for her husband, making herself and her condition of
+      no account that nothing might disturb his meditation, impressed her
+      children with a sort of awe of the paternal majesty. Such self-devotion,
+      however infectious it might be, only increased Marguerite&rsquo;s admiration for
+      her mother, to whom she was more particularly bound by the close intimacy
+      of their daily lives. This feeling was based on the intuitive perception
+      of sufferings whose causes naturally occupied the young girl&rsquo;s mind. No
+      human power could have hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by
+      Josette, from enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of
+      her home during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes&rsquo;s
+      reserve, Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the
+      domestic drama. She was soon to be her mother&rsquo;s active confidante, and
+      later, under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes&rsquo;s watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter, to whom
+      she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards Balthazar. The
+      firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in the young girl made
+      her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle between father and
+      daughter whenever her own death should make the latter mistress of the
+      household. The poor woman had reached a point where she dreaded the
+      consequences of her death far more than death itself. Her tender
+      solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the resolution she had this day
+      taken. By freeing his property from encumbrance she secured his
+      independence, and prevented all future disputes by separating his
+      interests from those of her children. She hoped to see him happy until she
+      closed her eyes on earth, and she studied to transmit the tenderness of
+      her own heart to Marguerite, trusting that his daughter might continue to
+      be to him an angel of love, while exercising over the family a protecting
+      and conservative authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love
+      upon her dear ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not
+      willing to lower the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her
+      into the secret dangers of his scientific passion before it became
+      necessary to do so. She studied Marguerite&rsquo;s soul and character, seeking
+      to discover if the girl&rsquo;s own nature would lead her to be a mother to her
+      brothers and her sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes&rsquo;s last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+      disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+      recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly to
+      the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the care of
+      property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of the Absolute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+      monotonous beating of Balthazar&rsquo;s foot, which he continued to trot, wholly
+      unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was sitting
+      beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid, convulsed face,
+      turned now and again to her father, wondering at his indifference.
+      Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw the Abbe de Solis
+      leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing the court-yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That good young man!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Claes; &ldquo;I am glad to welcome him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother&rsquo;s lips. For the
+      last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred mysterious
+      feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts that had lain
+      dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to Madame Claes on the
+      occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of those
+      imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life; and
+      their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief sketch of
+      the two personages now first introduced into the history of this family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties of
+      her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
+      family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
+      elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at the
+      aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
+      face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes. He
+      walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a painfully
+      deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and obliged him
+      to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand. His bent
+      figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate, suffering
+      nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious purity.
+      This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning, his sincere
+      piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been successively a
+      Dominican friar, the &ldquo;grand penitencier&rdquo; of Toledo, and the vicar-general
+      of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French Revolution had not
+      intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family would have made him one
+      of the highest dignitaries of the Church; but the grief he felt for the
+      death of the young duke, Madame Claes&rsquo;s brother, who had been his pupil,
+      turned him from active life, and he now devoted himself to the education
+      of his nephew, who was made an orphan at an early age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
+      near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
+      Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led him
+      to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
+      Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
+      made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
+      those ideas, he remained there,&mdash;all the more willingly because he
+      was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
+      continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
+      censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame Guyon. His morals were
+      rigid, his life exemplary, and he was believed to have visions. In spite
+      of his own detachment from the things of life, his affection for his
+      nephew made him careful of the young man&rsquo;s interests. When a work of
+      charity was to be done, the old abbe put the faithful of his flock under
+      contribution before having recourse to his own means; and his patriarchal
+      authority was so well established, his motives so pure, his discernment so
+      rarely at fault, that every one was ready to answer his appeal. To give an
+      idea of the contrast between the uncle and the nephew, we may compare the
+      old man to a willow on the borders of a stream, hollowed to a skeleton and
+      barely alive, and the young man to a sweet-brier clustering with roses,
+      whose erect and graceful stems spring up about the hoary trunk of the old
+      tree as if they would support it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at his
+      side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate sensibility, of
+      half-dreamy innocence,&mdash;those fleeting flowers of youth which bloom
+      perennially in souls that are nourished on religious principles. The old
+      priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his pupil, preparing him for
+      the trials of life by constant study and a discipline that was almost
+      cloisteral. Such an education, which would launch the youth unstained upon
+      the world and render him happy, provided he were fortunate in his earliest
+      affections, had endowed him with a purity of spirit which gave to his
+      person something of the charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest eyes,
+      veiling a strong and courageous soul, sent forth a light that vibrated in
+      the soul as the tones of a crystal bell sound their undulations on the
+      ear. His face, though regular, was expressive, and charmed the eye with
+      its clear-cut outline, the harmony of its lines, and the perfect repose
+      which came of a heart at peace. All was harmonious. His black hair, his
+      brown eyes and eyebrows, heightened the effect of a white skin and a
+      brilliant color. His voice was such as might have been expected from his
+      beautiful face; and something feminine in his movements accorded well with
+      the melody of its tones and with the tender brightness of his eyes. He
+      seemed unaware of the charm he exercised by his modest silence, the
+      half-melancholy reserve of his manner, and the respectful attentions he
+      paid to his uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the old
+      abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking for
+      obstructions that might trip his uncle&rsquo;s feet and guiding him to a
+      smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+      generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There was
+      something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in the
+      obedience that never cavilled at the old man&rsquo;s orders; it seemed as though
+      there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had given him. When
+      the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in their own home or in
+      the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes lift his head with so
+      much dignity, as if to assert his metal should any other man assail him,
+      that men of honor were moved at the sight like artists before a glorious
+      picture; for noble sentiments ring as loudly in the soul from living
+      incarnations as from the imagery of art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+      pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de Solis
+      was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a man,
+      invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity. Entering
+      hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times to hide
+      their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in black and
+      looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face of a young
+      man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their mutual
+      astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each other in
+      their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again with one
+      impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal. Marguerite took her
+      mother&rsquo;s arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and find shelter
+      under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like motion to keep
+      sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his arm. The light was
+      cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures, and the
+      half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances which are
+      the joy of timid natures. Neither went so far, even in thought, as the
+      first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble which stirs the
+      heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from fastidiousness or
+      modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed to
+      overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+      half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a
+      child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have
+      thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love,
+      listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure flames
+      already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an irresistible
+      feeling, we love the places where our childhood first perceived the
+      beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the musician, and even
+      the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more shall we love the
+      being who reveals to us the music of life? The first heart in which we
+      draw the breath of love,&mdash;is it not our home, our native land?
+      Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of music which
+      wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and reveals the
+      distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an angel,
+      Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon Emmanuel, and
+      Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought on the canvas
+      with the living thought beside him. This involuntary and delightful homage
+      was understood and treasured. The old abbe gravely praised the picture,
+      and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and the maiden were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture gallery,
+      the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders, all
+      contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this vaporous
+      mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite&rsquo;s mind grew
+      calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray when Emmanuel
+      murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes. That voice, whose fresh and
+      mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart, completed the
+      revelation that had come to her,&mdash;a revelation which Emmanuel, were
+      he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often happens that the
+      man whom destiny employs to waken love in the heart of a young girl is
+      ignorant of his work and leaves it unfinished. Marguerite bowed
+      confusedly; her true farewell was in the glance which seemed unwilling to
+      lose so pure and lovely a vision. Like a child she wanted her melody.
+      Their parting took place at the foot of the old staircase near the parlor;
+      and when Marguerite re-entered the room she watched the uncle and the
+      nephew till the street-door closed upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which caused
+      her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion observe her
+      daughter&rsquo;s manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to the house on the
+      occasion of her illness, she was too violently agitated to notice the
+      color that rushed into Marguerite&rsquo;s face and betrayed the tumult of a
+      virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By the time the old abbe was
+      announced, Marguerite had taken up her sewing and appeared to give it such
+      attention that she bowed to the uncle and nephew without looking at them.
+      Monsieur Claes mechanically returned their salutation and left the room
+      with the air of a man called away by his occupations. The good Dominican
+      sat down beside Madame Claes and looked at her with one of those searching
+      glances by which he penetrated the minds of others; the sight of Monsieur
+      Claes and his wife was enough to make him aware of a catastrophe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children,&rdquo; said the mother, &ldquo;go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+      Emmanuel your father&rsquo;s tulips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie&rsquo;s arm and looked at the young man,
+      who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion. When all
+      four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other side, leaving
+      Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young de Solis, led him
+      to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the same manner year after
+      year by Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you love tulips?&rdquo; asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+      deep silence,&mdash;a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+      perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their beauties.
+      They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber in which I
+      live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that are softer to
+      the eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it was
+      of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness, the
+      sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you work very hard?&rdquo; she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with a
+      back, painted green. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;the tulips are not so close;
+      they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors are
+      dazzling; they give pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I work hard?&rdquo; replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+      smoothed the gravel with his foot. &ldquo;Yes; I work at many things. My uncle
+      wished to make me a priest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage to
+      oppose my uncle&rsquo;s wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+      recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription&mdash;me,
+      a poor orphan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean to be?&rdquo; asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+      herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+      gesture, &ldquo;I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender admiration,
+      &ldquo;except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am studying to be
+      a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I were principal of a
+      college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to live moderately, and I
+      might marry some single woman whom I could love. That is the life I look
+      forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a daisy in the meadows to these
+      splendid tulips, whose purple and gold and rubies and amethysts betoken a
+      life of luxury, just as the daisy is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal
+      life,&mdash;the life of a poor teacher like me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have always called the daisies marguerites,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
+      Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he feared
+      were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said at last,
+      &ldquo;I dared not pronounce your name&rdquo;&mdash;then he paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A teacher?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+      undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+      taste for historical researches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That &ldquo;ah!&rdquo; so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a
+      foolish laugh and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I think,&rdquo;
+       said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother seems to me greatly changed,&rdquo; said Emmanuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and we
+      can only try to share them with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+      involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+      Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown to
+      Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the price
+      of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in Holland,
+      intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when poverty
+      should overtake her children. With much deliberation, and after weighing
+      every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one of prudence.
+      He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which he engaged to
+      make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the estimation of
+      others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with letters
+      of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service
+      to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the gallery
+      to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of
+      eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were
+      paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that
+      nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to
+      the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel de
+      Solis was commissioned by Claes to receive the price of the pictures,
+      which were thereupon packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale
+      from the people of Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he had
+      borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his chemical
+      researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its noblest ornament.
+      Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret; he felt so sure of
+      repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he reserved the right of
+      redemption. In Josephine&rsquo;s eyes a hundred pictures were as nothing
+      compared to domestic happiness and the satisfaction of her husband&rsquo;s mind;
+      moreover, she refilled the gallery with other paintings taken from the
+      reception-rooms, and to conceal the gaps which these left in the front
+      house, she changed the arrangement of the furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Balthazar&rsquo;s debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+      francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and his
+      nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats reserved by
+      Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the Dutch ducats, to
+      which the events of the Continental war had given a commercial value. One
+      hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were buried in the cellar of the
+      house in which the abbe and his nephew resided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+      incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock he
+      had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor and
+      debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely
+      absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken France,
+      nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, drew him
+      from his laboratory; he was neither husband, father, nor citizen,&mdash;solely
+      chemist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she was no
+      longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own chamber,
+      the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished joys forced
+      involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her, she moved into
+      the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring the room more
+      airy, more cheerful, and therefore better suited to her condition. The bed
+      in which the unfortunate woman ended her life was placed between the
+      fireplace and a window looking on the garden. There she passed her last
+      days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of her young daughters,
+      striving to leave within them the fire of her own. Conjugal love, deprived
+      of its manifestations, allowed maternal love to have its way. The mother
+      now seemed the more delightful because her motherhood had blossomed late.
+      Like all generous persons, she passed through sensitive phases of feeling
+      that she mistook for remorse. Believing that she had defrauded her
+      children of the tenderness that should have been theirs, she sought to
+      redeem those imaginary wrongs; bestowing attentions and tender cares which
+      made her precious to them; she longed to make her children live, as it
+      were, within her heart; to shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to
+      cherish them enough in the few remaining days to redeem the time during
+      which she had neglected them. The sufferings of her mind gave to her words
+      and her caresses a glowing warmth that issued from her soul. Her eyes
+      caressed her children, her voice with its yearning intonations touched
+      their hearts, her hand showered blessings on their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
+      received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
+      the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes&rsquo;s state of health seemed a
+      sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband&rsquo;s debts
+      put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes to
+      which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
+      occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
+      completely out of people&rsquo;s minds. During those two years Douai was so
+      often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either by
+      the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of the
+      country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were in
+      peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+      lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom the
+      winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband rarely
+      came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some hours in
+      the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength to keep up
+      a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the same, sat down,
+      spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon the room. The
+      monotony of this existence was broken only on the days when the Abbe de
+      Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
+      Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
+      not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
+      spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
+      words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them so full
+      of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual understanding
+      surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she was, back to the
+      young and happy past which gave such bitterness to the present. Emmanuel
+      and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling repressed the sweet
+      half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the saddened woman whose
+      wounds they instinctively divined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
+      nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
+      which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
+      and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development. There
+      are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of Madame
+      Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life has smiled;
+      these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time of joy, seasons
+      that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are other loves, framed
+      in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures are painful, costly,
+      burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or blackened by despair. The love
+      in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel, as yet unknown to them for love,
+      the sentiment that budded into life beneath the gloomy arches of the
+      picture-gallery, beside the stern old abbe, in a still and silent moment,
+      that love so grave and so discreet, yet rich in tender depths, in secret
+      delights that were luscious to the taste as stolen grapes snatched from a
+      corner of the vineyard, wore in coming years the sombre browns and grays
+      that surrounded the hour of its birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain, they
+      unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which deepened
+      its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter, shared by
+      Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and becoming by
+      anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium of communication.
+      Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl supplanted the honeyed
+      language of lovers; the sighing of their hearts, surcharged with joy at
+      some interchange of looks, was scarcely distinguishable from the sighs
+      wrung from them by the mother&rsquo;s sufferings. Their happy little moments of
+      indirect avowal, of unuttered promises, of smothered effusion, were like
+      the allegories of Raphael painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty
+      that neither avowed; they knew the sun was shining over them, but they
+      could not know what wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about
+      their heads. They doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow
+      them, they stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to
+      say to each other, &ldquo;Shall we end our days together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+      concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+      caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her comforters,
+      but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died through Balthazar.
+      However painful her husband&rsquo;s presence might be to her, lost as he was for
+      hours together in depths of thought from which he looked at her without
+      seeing her, it was only during those cruel moments that she forgot her
+      griefs. His indifference to the dying woman would have seemed criminal to
+      a stranger, but Madame Claes and her daughters were accustomed to it; they
+      knew his heart and they forgave him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was
+      seized by some sudden illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying,
+      Claes was the only person in the house or in the town who remained
+      ignorant of it. Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to
+      silence by their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the
+      danger of the being he had once so passionately loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
+      Claes was happy&mdash;she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
+      strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
+      brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
+      came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her cheek,
+      and to him she seemed well. When he asked, &ldquo;My dear wife, how are you
+      to-day?&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;Better, dear friend,&rdquo; and made him think she would
+      be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great that he
+      accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife was dying
+      a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his alone she was
+      living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+      year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
+      shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
+      presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to visit
+      them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two beings,
+      formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare intervals,
+      enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve which feed the
+      life of the heart; and finally there came a time when even these rare
+      pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon to the poor woman,
+      helping her to endure the void of separation, which might have killed her
+      had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became so great that there were
+      times when she was joyful in the thought that he whom she loved was not a
+      witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar in the evening hours, and
+      knowing him happy in his own way, she lived in the happiness she had
+      procured for him,&mdash;a shadowy joy, and yet it satisfied her. She no
+      longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced herself to believe it;
+      and she glided over that icy surface, not daring to rest her weight upon
+      it lest it should break and drown her soul in a gulf of awful nothingness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
+      consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
+      condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks of
+      the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
+      February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the words
+      of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+      hear the conversation, &ldquo;Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+      hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to protect
+      the future of your children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
+      she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
+      which affected him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
+      herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
+      wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
+      pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
+      courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+      Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her remaining
+      strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused and looked at
+      her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s management of the household since her mother&rsquo;s illness had
+      amply fulfilled the dying woman&rsquo;s hopes that Madame Claes was able to look
+      upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident that she
+      herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both women felt,
+      no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made between them;
+      the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the daughter, tears
+      flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes rested from her
+      writing, Marguerite said: &ldquo;Mother?&rdquo; then she dropped as if choking; but
+      the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask the meaning of
+      the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal the letter;
+      Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she might not see
+      the superscription.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can read it, my child,&rdquo; said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl read the words, &ldquo;To my daughter Marguerite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
+      hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling by
+      her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been brought
+      from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months was
+      professor of history and philosophy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear children, we must part!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You have never forsaken me,
+      never! and he who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother&rsquo;s
+      face, &ldquo;go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+      Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
+      urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, &ldquo;I will come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Emmanuel,&rdquo; said Madame Claes when he returned to her, &ldquo;take my sons away,
+      and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last sacraments, and
+      I wish to receive them from his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
+      understood her and sent Felicie away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma,&rdquo; said Marguerite who,
+      not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased the wound
+      Pierquin had given. &ldquo;I have had no money for the household expenses during
+      the last ten days; I owe six months&rsquo; wages to the servants. Twice I have
+      tried to ask my father for money, but did not dare to do so. You don&rsquo;t
+      know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the gallery have been sold, and
+      all the wines in the cellar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never told me!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Claes. &ldquo;My God! thou callest me to
+      thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite,&rdquo; she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, &ldquo;here is a
+      paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death, when
+      some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are without the
+      means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but take care of
+      your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few hours perhaps, you
+      will be the head of this household. Be economical. Should you find
+      yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,&mdash;and it may so happen,
+      because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret whose discovery
+      is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will no doubt need
+      money, perhaps he may demand it of you,&mdash;should that time come, treat
+      him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile the interests
+      of which you will be the sole protector with the duty which you owe to a
+      father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness and his life to the
+      glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act, his intentions are
+      noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him once more kind and
+      affectionate&mdash;YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say these words to
+      you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften the anguish of my
+      death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside your father; to cause
+      him no grief; never to reproach him; never to condemn him. Be a gentle,
+      considerate guardian of the home until&mdash;his work accomplished&mdash;he
+      is again the master of his family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand you, dear mother,&rdquo; said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+      eyelids of the dying woman. &ldquo;I will do as you wish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the management
+      of the property and the household. If you married, your husband might not
+      share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the family and disturb
+      your father&rsquo;s life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite looked at her mother and said, &ldquo;Have you nothing else to say to
+      me about my marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you hesitate, my child?&rdquo; cried the dying woman in alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the daughter answered; &ldquo;I promise to obey you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you,&rdquo; said the mother, shedding
+      hot tears. &ldquo;Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all. Happiness makes
+      us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to guard others who as
+      yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your sister may not reproach
+      my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose him&mdash;too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was gone;
+      the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too violent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis, and
+      the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the ceremony
+      was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor, looked about
+      her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is my husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those words&mdash;summing up, as it were, her life and her death&mdash;were
+      uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
+      spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
+      through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
+      last sacraments,&rdquo; she cried with the violence of indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; answered Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
+      him. Madame Claes&rsquo;s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband did
+      not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered, Josephine
+      colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?&rdquo; she said to him with an angelic
+      tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done it!&rdquo; he cried joyfully; &ldquo;Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+      substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
+      principle of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they tell me?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;Are you worse? What is the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the matter, monsieur,&rdquo; whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant at
+      his conduct; &ldquo;your wife is dying, and you have killed her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and went
+      out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
+      Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
+      tears dropped from his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are dying, and I have killed you!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What does he mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My husband,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I only lived in your love, and you have taken
+      my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us,&rdquo; said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room. &ldquo;Have
+      I for one moment ceased to love you?&rdquo; he went on, sitting down beside his
+      wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy&mdash;too happy, for I
+      have not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
+      full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are not
+      yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
+      functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to all
+      that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married days;
+      such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen into fruits
+      which feed the soul,&mdash;confidence unlimited, the tender habits of
+      affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in time: we live
+      together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions from me. How is it
+      that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word, one look, one gesture of
+      reproach? And yet, you have sold your last pictures, you have sold even
+      the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing money on your property, and
+      have said no word to me. Ah! I go from life weary of life. If you are
+      doing wrong, if you delude yourself in following the unattainable, have I
+      not shown you that my love could share your faults, could walk beside you
+      and be happy, though you led me in the paths of crime? You loved me too
+      well,&mdash;that was my glory; it is now my death. Balthazar, my illness
+      has lasted long; it began on the day when here, in this place where I am
+      about to die, you showed me that Science was more to you than Family. And
+      now the end has come; your wife is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune
+      and wife were yours,&mdash;you could do what you willed with your own; but
+      on the day of my death my property goes to my children, and you cannot
+      touch it; what will then become of you? I am telling you the truth; I owe
+      it to you. Dying eyes see far; when I am gone will anything outweigh that
+      cursed passion which is now your life? If you have sacrificed your wife,
+      your children will count but little in the scale; for I must be just and
+      own you loved me above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have
+      cast into the gulf,&mdash;and what have you found?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children,&rdquo; continued the dying
+      woman. &ldquo;You are called in derision &lsquo;Claes the alchemist&rsquo;; soon it will be
+      &lsquo;Claes the madman.&rsquo; For myself, I believe in you. I know you great and
+      wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is mania. Fame is a
+      sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy with the unhappiness
+      of great minds, and your children will be ruined. I go before I see your
+      fame, which might have brought me consolation for my lost happiness. Oh,
+      Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let me be certain that my
+      children will not want for bread&mdash;Ah, nothing, nothing, not even you,
+      can calm my fears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear,&rdquo; said Claes, &ldquo;to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath,&rdquo; she said,
+      interrupting him. &ldquo;You owed us your protection; we have been without it
+      seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither wife
+      nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His virtues are
+      not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot
+      belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about him,
+      like a majestic tree&mdash;and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the
+      height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for this last day to
+      tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings of
+      desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo in
+      your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead, dead;
+      you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her joys.
+      Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But those poor
+      children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my anguish, the mother
+      still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lemulquinier!&rdquo; cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go up and destroy all&mdash;instruments, apparatus, everything! Be
+      careful, but destroy all. I renounce Science,&rdquo; he said to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. &ldquo;Marguerite!&rdquo; she
+      cried, feeling herself about to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she saw
+      her mother&rsquo;s eyes now glazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MARGUERITE!&rdquo; repeated the dying woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+      invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
+      bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
+      forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the foot
+      of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose virtues and
+      exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone. Father and daughter
+      exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter judged the father,
+      and already the father trembled, seeing in his daughter an instrument of
+      vengeance. Though memories of the love with which his Pepita had filled
+      his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to her dying words a sacred
+      authority whose voice his soul must ever hear, yet Balthazar knew himself
+      helpless in the grasp of his attendant genius; he heard the terrible
+      mutterings of his passion, denying him the strength to carry his
+      repentance into action: he feared himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the minds
+      of all,&mdash;the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
+      The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
+      woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to enter
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
+      hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
+      the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by
+      ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers, anathematizes those
+      who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion (the hypocrite!) in
+      weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a few
+      flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist, doing
+      homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and spades.
+      Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,&mdash;the fi, fo, fum of collective
+      grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with neither more nor less
+      of feeling, at all hours and in every town in France,&mdash;they proceeded
+      to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin was the first to observe
+      that the death of this excellent woman was a mercy, for her husband had
+      made her unhappy; and it was even more fortunate for her children: she was
+      unable while living to refuse her money to the husband she adored; but now
+      that she was dead, Claes was debarred from touching it. Thereupon all
+      present calculated the fortune of that poor Madame Claes, wondered how
+      much she had laid by (had she, in fact, laid by anything?), made an
+      inventory of her jewels, rummaged in her wardrobe, peeped into her
+      drawers, while the afflicted family were still weeping and praying around
+      her death-bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes&rsquo;s possessions
+      in her own right&mdash;to use the notarial phrase&mdash;might still be
+      recovered, and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of francs;
+      basing this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,&mdash;whose timber,
+      counting the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval growths, and the
+      recent plantations, had immensely increased in value during the last
+      twelve years,&mdash;and partly on Balthazar&rsquo;s own property, of which
+      enough remained to &ldquo;cover&rdquo; the claims of his children, if the liquidation
+      of their mother&rsquo;s fortune did not yield sufficient to release him.
+      Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin&rsquo;s slang, &ldquo;a
+      four-hundred-thousand-franc girl.&rdquo; &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;if she doesn&rsquo;t marry,&mdash;a
+      step which would of course separate her interests and permit us to sell
+      the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the minor children
+      and reinvest it where the father can&rsquo;t lay hands on it,&mdash;Claes is
+      likely to ruin them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy to
+      win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the lawyer the
+      compliment of suggesting that he might be the man. Pierquin, however,
+      found so many good reasons to reject the suggested matches as unworthy of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s position, that the confabulators glanced at each other and
+      smiled, and took malicious pleasure in prolonging this truly provincial
+      method of annoyance. Pierquin had already decided that Madame Claes&rsquo;s
+      death would have a favorable effect upon his suit, and he began mentally
+      to cut up the body in his own interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That good woman,&rdquo; he said to himself as he went home to bed, &ldquo;was as
+      proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey, hey!
+      why couldn&rsquo;t I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere Claes is
+      drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after convincing
+      Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her brothers and
+      sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be glad to get rid of
+      a girl who is likely to thwart him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+      reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded for
+      his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the provinces
+      there was certainly not a better brought-up or more delicately lovely
+      young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her grace, were like
+      those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to name lest he should
+      betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments were lofty, her principles
+      religious, she would undoubtedly make him a faithful wife: moreover, she
+      not only flattered the vanity which influences every man more or less in
+      the choice of a wife, but she gratified his pride by the high
+      consideration which her family, doubly ennobled, enjoyed in Flanders,&mdash;a
+      consideration which her husband of course would share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several thousand-franc
+      notes, which he offered with great friendliness to Balthazar, so as to
+      relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst of his grief. Touched by
+      this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he thought, praise his goodness
+      and his personal qualities to Marguerite. In this he was mistaken.
+      Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was a very natural action, and
+      their sorrow was too absorbing to let them even think of the lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar&rsquo;s despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed to
+      blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,&mdash;less on
+      account of the Science which might have excused him, than for the remorse
+      which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by appearances: it
+      takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic worth of the
+      article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species of enjoyment,
+      which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its thirst for emotions
+      it acquits without judging the man who raises a laugh, or he who makes it
+      weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+      household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+      moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority with
+      docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of her skin,
+      just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the gentleness and
+      patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs of feminine
+      courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels appointed to shed
+      peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving palms. But although
+      she trained herself, through a premature perception of duty, to hide her
+      personal grief, it was none the less bitter; her calm exterior was not in
+      keeping with the deep trouble of her thoughts, and she was destined to
+      undergo, too early in life, those terrible outbursts of feeling which no
+      heart is wholly able to subdue: her father was to hold her incessantly
+      under the pressure of natural youthful generosity on the one hand, and the
+      dictates of imperious duty on the other. The cares which came upon her the
+      very day of her mother&rsquo;s death threw her into a struggle with the
+      interests of life at an age when young girls are thinking only of its
+      pleasures. Dreadful discipline of suffering, which is never lacking to
+      angelic natures!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+      passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few days
+      after Madame Claes&rsquo;s death he took occasion to speak to Marguerite, and
+      began operations with a cleverness which might have succeeded if love had
+      not given her the power of clear insight and saved her from mistaking
+      appearances that were all the more specious because Pierquin displayed his
+      natural kindheartedness,&mdash;the kindliness of a notary who thinks
+      himself loving while he protects a client&rsquo;s money. Relying on his rather
+      distant relationship and his constant habit of managing the business and
+      sharing the secrets of the Claes family, sure of the esteem and friendship
+      of the father, greatly assisted by the careless inattention of that
+      servant of science who took no thought for the marriage of his daughter,
+      and not suspecting that Marguerite could prefer another,&mdash;Pierquin
+      unguardedly enabled her to form a judgment on a suit in which there was no
+      passion except that of self-interest, always odious to a young soul, and
+      which he was not clever enough to conceal. It was he who on this occasion
+      was naively above-board, it was she who dissimulated,&mdash;simply because
+      he thought he was dealing with a defenceless girl, and wholly misconceived
+      the privileges of weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking about
+      the paths of the little garden, &ldquo;you know my heart, you understand how
+      truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which absorb you at this
+      moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart
+      only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I would
+      fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I suffer
+      deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant with your
+      state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much about you during
+      the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal delusion the fortune
+      of your brothers and sister and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to
+      save your family from complete ruin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What must I do?&rdquo; she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marry,&rdquo; answered Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not marry,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you will marry,&rdquo; replied the notary, &ldquo;when you have soberly thought
+      over the critical position in which you are placed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can my marriage save&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin,&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      interrupting her. &ldquo;Marriage will emancipate you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I be emancipated?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your property,
+      my dear little cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer in a tone of triumph. &ldquo;If you
+      marry you take your share of your mother&rsquo;s property. To give it to you,
+      the whole property must be liquidated; to do that, it becomes necessary to
+      sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the proceeds will be capitalized,
+      and your father, as guardian, will be compelled to invest the fortune of
+      his children in such a way that Chemistry can&rsquo;t get hold of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I do not marry, what will happen?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the notary, &ldquo;your father will manage your estate as he
+      pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the timber of
+      the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as the little Saint
+      Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred thousand francs; but
+      from one day to another you are not sure your father won&rsquo;t cut it down,
+      and then your thirteen hundred acres are not worth three hundred thousand
+      francs. Isn&rsquo;t it better to avoid this almost certain danger by at once
+      compelling the division of property on your marriage? If the forest is
+      sold now, while Chemistry has gone to sleep, your father will put the
+      proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The Funds are at 59; those dear children
+      will get nearly five thousand francs a year for every fifty thousand
+      francs: and, inasmuch as the property of minors cannot be sold out, your
+      brothers and sister will find their fortunes doubled in value by the time
+      they come of age. Whereas, in the other case,&mdash;faith, no one knows
+      what may happen: your father has already impaired your mother&rsquo;s property;
+      we shall find out the deficit when we come to make the inventory. If he is
+      in debt to her estate, you will take a mortgage on his, and in that way
+      something may be recovered&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For shame!&rdquo; said Marguerite. &ldquo;It would be an outrage on my father. It is
+      not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have forgotten
+      them. My father is incapable of robbing his children,&rdquo; she continued,
+      giving way to tears of distress. &ldquo;You misunderstand him, Monsieur
+      Pierquin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are ruined; is that what you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand
+      which he placed upon his heart, &ldquo;I should fail of my duty if I did not
+      persist in this matter. Your interests alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, &ldquo;the true
+      interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin,&rdquo; he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+      escaping him, &ldquo;you commit suicide; you fling your mother&rsquo;s property into a
+      gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know not how I
+      love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball, three years
+      ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it speaks to you of
+      your own interests, Marguerite.&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;Yes, we must call a family
+      council and emancipate you&mdash;without consulting you,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is it to be emancipated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to enjoy your own rights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+      marry? and whom should I marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+      contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money, that
+      Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would marry the person who&mdash;pleases you&mdash;the most,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;A husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business.
+      You are now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him
+      all alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister when
+      the time comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pshaw! the obstinate creature,&rdquo; thought Pierquin. &ldquo;No, you will not
+      resist him,&rdquo; he said aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us end the subject,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I will
+      prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster which
+      all the town foresees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you for the interest you take in me,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but I
+      entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+      pain to my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+      compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring, his
+      glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry in
+      which Emmanuel&rsquo;s sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be said, or
+      what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose effects never
+      deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the passionate gestures of a
+      lover may be imitated; a young girl can be deluded by a clever comedian;
+      but to succeed, the man must be alone in the field. If the young girl has
+      another soul beside her whose pulses vibrate in unison with hers, she is
+      able to distinguish the expressions of a true love. Emmanuel, like
+      Marguerite, felt the influence of the chords which, from the time of their
+      first meeting had gathered ominously about their heads, hiding from their
+      eyes the blue skies of love. His feeling for the Elect of his heart was an
+      idolatry which the total absence of hope rendered gentle and mysterious in
+      its manifestations. Socially too far removed from Mademoiselle Claes by
+      his want of fortune, with nothing but a noble name to offer her, he saw no
+      chance of ever being her husband. Yet he had always hoped for certain
+      encouragements which Marguerite refused to give before the failing eyes of
+      her dying mother. Both equally pure, they had never said to one another a
+      word of love. Their joys were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They
+      trembled apart, though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same
+      hope. They seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely
+      belonged to the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of
+      the sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+      would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+      mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+      vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love that
+      even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed in each
+      other&rsquo;s hearts that both were ready to make the greatest sacrifices, which
+      were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could expect to taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since Madame Claes&rsquo;s death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning. The
+      tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first, were
+      now black; the few lights were veiled by tears. Marguerite&rsquo;s reserve
+      changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by her mother.
+      With more freedom of action, she nevertheless became more distant.
+      Emmanuel shared his beloved&rsquo;s grief, comprehending that the slightest word
+      or wish of love at such a time transgressed the laws of the heart. Their
+      love was therefore more concealed than it had ever been. These tender
+      souls sounded the same note: held apart by grief, as formerly by the
+      timidities of youth and by respect for the sufferings of the mother, they
+      clung to the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute eloquence of
+      devoted actions, the constant unison of thoughts,&mdash;divine harmonies
+      of youth, the first steps of a love still in its infancy. Emmanuel came
+      every morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he never entered
+      the dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring a letter from
+      Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in. His first glance at the
+      young girl contained a thousand sympathetic thoughts; it told her that he
+      suffered under these conventional restraints, that he never left her, he
+      was always with her, he shared her grief. He shed the tears of his own
+      pain into the soul of his dear one by a look that was marred by no selfish
+      reservation. His good heart lived so completely in the present, he clung
+      so firmly to a happiness which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite
+      sometimes reproached herself for not generously holding out her hand and
+      saying, &ldquo;Let us at least be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting
+      patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the
+      multitude when judging of women. He believed that the words marriage,
+      freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and
+      flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her coldness
+      was mere dissimulation. But surround her as he would with gallant
+      attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man accustomed to
+      manage the private affairs of many families with a high hand. He
+      discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to his
+      profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving
+      behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity. His
+      tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped his feigned melancholy at the
+      door when he put on his overshoes, or took his umbrella. He used the tone
+      his long intimacy authorized as an instrument to work himself still
+      further into the bosom of the family, and bring Marguerite to a marriage
+      which the whole town was beginning to foresee. The true, devoted,
+      respectful love formed a striking contrast to its selfish, calculating
+      semblance. Each man&rsquo;s conduct was homogenous: one feigned a passion and
+      seized every advantage to gain the prize; the other hid his love and
+      trembled lest he should betray his devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the same
+      day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom she had
+      any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which she was
+      condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to those who might
+      think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a fine morning in
+      April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur Claes was going out.
+      The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to Balthazar that he spent
+      part of every day in walking about the ramparts. Emmanuel made a motion as
+      if to follow him, then he hesitated, seemed to gather up his courage,
+      looked at Marguerite and remained. The young girl felt sure that he wished
+      to speak with her, and asked him to go into the garden; then she sent
+      Felicie to Martha, who was sewing in the antechamber on the upper floor,
+      and seated herself on a garden-seat in full view of her sister and the old
+      duenna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by science,&rdquo;
+       began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed the
+      court-yard. &ldquo;Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man who has
+      lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he gazes
+      without seeing anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every sorrow has its own expression,&rdquo; said Marguerite, checking her
+      tears. &ldquo;What is it you wish to say to me?&rdquo; she added after a pause, coldly
+      and with dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, &ldquo;I scarcely know
+      if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think only of my
+      desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a teacher to be
+      interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother Gabriel is over fifteen;
+      he is in the second class; it is now necessary to direct his studies in
+      the line of whatever future career he may take up. It is for your father
+      to decide what that career shall be: if he gives the matter no thought,
+      the injury to Gabriel would be serious. But then, again, would it not
+      mortify your father if you showed him that he is neglecting his son&rsquo;s
+      interests? Under these circumstances, could you not yourself consult
+      Gabriel as to his tastes, and help him to choose a career, so that later,
+      if his father should think of making him a public officer, an
+      administrator, a soldier, he might be prepared with some special training?
+      I do not suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish to bring
+      Gabriel up in idleness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no!&rdquo; said Marguerite; &ldquo;when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+      took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often said
+      we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel ought to have
+      a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me, what career is
+      best for a man to choose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, &ldquo;Gabriel is at the
+      head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the Ecole
+      Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge which will
+      fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can choose the path in
+      life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus, without compromising his
+      future, you will have saved a great deal of time. Men who leave the Ecole
+      with honors are sought after on all sides; the school turns out statesmen,
+      diplomats, men of science, engineers, generals, sailors, magistrates,
+      manufacturers, and bankers. There is nothing extraordinary in the son of a
+      rich or noble family preparing himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on
+      this course I shall ask you to&mdash;will you grant my request? Say yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me be his tutor,&rdquo; he answered, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and said,
+      &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;&mdash;and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+      accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have thought
+      for us. I thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not to
+      show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to his
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will bring both boys to see you,&rdquo; he said, when he was a little calmer;
+      &ldquo;to-morrow is a holiday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when he
+      had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door of the
+      dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+      father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had sat
+      that morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; he said to Balthazar, &ldquo;I have come to-night to talk to
+      you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I keep no account of time,&rdquo; said Balthazar, wiping away the tears that
+      came at the word &ldquo;decease.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, monsieur!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, &ldquo;how can you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the limits
+      of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you and your
+      co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he must make an
+      inventory of his property within forty-five days of his wife&rsquo;s decease, so
+      as to render in his accounts at the end of that time. It is necessary to
+      know the value of his property before deciding whether to accept it as
+      sufficient security, or whether we must fall back on the legal rights of
+      minors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not go away, my dear cousin,&rdquo; continued Pierquin; &ldquo;my words concern
+      you&mdash;you and your father both. You know how truly I share your grief,
+      but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If you do not,
+      every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am only doing my
+      duty as the family lawyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is right,&rdquo; said Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time expires in two days,&rdquo; resumed Pierquin; &ldquo;and I must begin the
+      inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the legacy-tax
+      which the public treasurer will come here and demand. Treasurers have no
+      hearts; they don&rsquo;t trouble themselves about feelings; they fasten their
+      claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore for the next two days my clerk and
+      I will be here from ten till four with Monsieur Raparlier, the public
+      appraiser. After we get through the town property we shall go into the
+      country. As for the forest of Waignies, we shall be obliged to hold a
+      consultation about that. Now let us turn to another matter. We must call a
+      family council and appoint a guardian to protect the interests of the
+      minor children. Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your nearest relative; but
+      he has now become a Belgian. You ought,&rdquo; continued Pierquin, addressing
+      Balthazar, &ldquo;to write to him on this matter; you can then find out if he
+      has any intention of settling in France, where he has a fine property.
+      Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to move into French
+      Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making up the council with
+      the other near relatives.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the use of an inventory?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts and
+      its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family council, acting
+      on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it sees fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pierquin,&rdquo; said Claes, rising from the bench, &ldquo;do all that is necessary
+      to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the distress of selling
+      the things that belonged to my dear&mdash;&rdquo; he was unable to continue; but
+      he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of such deep feeling that
+      Marguerite took her father&rsquo;s hand and kissed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, then,&rdquo; said Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to breakfast,&rdquo; said Claes; then he seemed to gather his scattered
+      senses together and exclaimed: &ldquo;But in my marriage contract, which was
+      drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from the obligation
+      of making an inventory, in order that she might not be annoyed by it: it
+      is very probable that I was equally released&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what happiness!&rdquo; cried Marguerite. &ldquo;It would have been so distressing
+      to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow,&rdquo; said the
+      notary, rather confused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you did not know of this?&rdquo; said Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused to
+      continue it after the young girl&rsquo;s comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil is in it!&rdquo; he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+      &ldquo;That man&rsquo;s wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,&mdash;just
+      when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against him! I have
+      cracked my brains to save the property of those children. I meant to
+      proceed regularly and come to an understanding with old Conyncks, and
+      here&rsquo;s the end of it! I shall lose ground with Marguerite, for she will
+      certainly ask her father why I wanted an inventory of the property, which
+      she now sees was not necessary; and Claes will tell her that notaries have
+      a passion for writing documents, that we are lawyers above all, above
+      cousins or friends or relatives, and all such stuff as that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+      themselves by sensitiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore, was
+      done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the matter of
+      property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+      Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis, worked
+      studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the necessary
+      examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and Felicie
+      lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father&rsquo;s country
+      place as a measure of economy. Monsieur Claes attended to his business
+      affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a considerable sum of money on his
+      property, and went to see the forest at Waignies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him a
+      prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he was
+      leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely
+      against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he forbade
+      himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it. Still, he
+      would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his researches
+      theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled his passion which
+      soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he was really bound not to
+      continue his researches, and remembered that his wife had refused his
+      oath. Though he had pledged his word to himself that he would never pursue
+      the solution of the great Problem, might he not change that determination
+      at a moment when he foresaw success? He was now fifty-nine years old. At
+      that age a predominant idea contracts a certain peevish fixedness which is
+      the first stage of monomania.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace which
+      Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries and
+      scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of various
+      countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+      communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+      progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists themselves,
+      towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted to the higher
+      sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat, electricity, galvanism,
+      magnetism were all different effects of the same cause, and that the
+      difference existing between substances hitherto considered simple must be
+      produced by varying proportions of an unknown principle. The fear that
+      some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals and discover the
+      constituent principle of electricity,&mdash;two achievements which would
+      lead to the solution of the chemical Absolute,&mdash;increased what the
+      people of Douai called a mania, and drove his desires to a paroxysm
+      conceivable to those who devote themselves to the sciences, or who have
+      ever known the tyranny of ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion all
+      the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite, who
+      watched every evidence of her father&rsquo;s state of mind, opened the
+      long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+      which her mother&rsquo;s death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+      re-awaking her father&rsquo;s grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+      the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She determined
+      to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its distractions.
+      Several good marriages were proposed to her, which occupied Claes&rsquo;s mind,
+      but to all of them she replied that she should not marry until after she
+      was twenty-five. But in spite of his daughter&rsquo;s efforts, in spite of his
+      remorseful struggles, Balthazar, at the beginning of the winter, returned
+      secretly to his researches. It was difficult, however, to hide his
+      operations from the inquisitive women in the kitchen; and one morning
+      Martha, while dressing Marguerite, said to her:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier&mdash;who
+      is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the cross&mdash;has
+      gone back to the garret. There&rsquo;s monsieur on the high-road to hell. Pray
+      God he mayn&rsquo;t kill you as he killed my poor mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not possible!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and see the signs of their traffic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
+      the flue of the laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be twenty-one in a few months,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;and I shall know
+      how to oppose the destruction of our property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect for
+      the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the happiness
+      of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was more elastic,
+      his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in his career of
+      glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man profoundly
+      trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked night and
+      day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know how little a
+      man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+      retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of a
+      miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
+      noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
+      necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
+      left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went to
+      bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters without
+      saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs they wished
+      him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss him on both
+      cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great domestic misfortunes had
+      Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the authority of a mother, and
+      if, moreover, she were not protected by a secret love from the dangers of
+      so much liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+      would soon be complete. Balthazar&rsquo;s rural estates, which yielded sixteen
+      thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
+      now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
+      francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed a
+      considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
+      interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who is the
+      slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to Marguerite
+      for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated that three
+      years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the law would step
+      in and eat up all that Balthazar had not squandered. Marguerite&rsquo;s coldness
+      brought Pierquin to a state of almost hostile indifference. To give
+      himself an appearance in the eyes of the world of having renounced her
+      hand, he frequently remarked of the Claes family in a tone of compassion:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well, it
+      can&rsquo;t be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal means
+      which might have rescued them from poverty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in Douai,
+      thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits which made him
+      worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two young girls, who
+      called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as their father had gone to
+      bed. Emmanuel&rsquo;s gentle rap at the street-door was never missing. For the
+      last three months, encouraged by the gracious, though mute gratitude with
+      which Marguerite now accepted his attentions, he became at his ease, and
+      was seen for what he was. The brightness of his pure spirit shone like a
+      flawless diamond; Marguerite learned to understand its strength and its
+      constancy when she saw how inexhaustible was the source from which it
+      came. She loved to watch the unfolding, one by one, of the blossoms of his
+      heart, whose perfume she had already breathed. Each day Emmanuel realized
+      some one of Marguerite&rsquo;s hopes, and illumined the enchanted regions of
+      love with new lights that chased away the clouds and brought to view the
+      serene heavens, giving color to the fruitful riches hidden away in the
+      shadow of their lives. More at his ease, the young man could display the
+      seductive qualities of his heart until now discreetly hidden, the
+      expansive gaiety of his age, the simplicity which comes of a life of
+      study, the treasures of a delicate mind that life has not adulterated, the
+      innocent joyousness which goes so well with loving youth. His soul and
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s understood each other better; they went together to the
+      depths of their hearts and found in each the same thoughts,&mdash;pearls
+      of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those the legends tell of
+      beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers. They made themselves known
+      to one another by an interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection
+      which bore the signs, in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done
+      without false shame, but not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which
+      Emmanuel spent with the sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to
+      accept the life of anguish and renunciation on which she had entered. This
+      artless, progressive love was her support. In all his testimonies of
+      affection Emmanuel showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet
+      yet subtile mind which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of
+      a diamond relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,&mdash;adorable
+      wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the
+      artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with
+      novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it is
+      an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to a
+      woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her heart and yet not
+      blight it. The more Emmanuel was free to utter himself, the more charming
+      were the expressions of his love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried to get here before Pierquin,&rdquo; he said to Marguerite one
+      evening. &ldquo;He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it from
+      me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at Waignies to
+      speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are already felled,
+      and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three hundred
+      thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price, which he has
+      used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off his debts
+      entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand francs of the
+      three hundred thousand still due to him on the purchase-money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin entered at this moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are ruined. I told you how it would
+      be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an insatiable
+      appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your family guardian,
+      Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam, and Claes has seized
+      the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all wrong. I have written to
+      Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too late; everything will be
+      squandered. You will be obliged to sue your father. The suit can&rsquo;t be
+      long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur Conyncks has no alternative
+      but to institute proceedings; the law requires it. This is the result of
+      your obstinacy. Do you now see my prudence, and how devoted I was to your
+      interests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bring you some good news, mademoiselle,&rdquo; said young de Solis in his
+      gentle voice. &ldquo;Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. The
+      difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+      Gabriel&rsquo;s outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard,&rdquo; she added,
+      kissing her sister&rsquo;s forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days,&rdquo; said Emmanuel;
+      &ldquo;he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing,&rdquo; said the lawyer, eyeing the
+      professor from head to foot; &ldquo;for he will have to make his own way. But,
+      my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of the family:
+      will you listen to what I say this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;not if it relates to marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what will you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&mdash;nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are of age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me,&rdquo; she
+      added, &ldquo;which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+      father and to the honor of the family?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+      does, I will call again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, monsieur,&rdquo; said Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself,&rdquo; thought the notary.
+      &ldquo;Adieu, mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said aloud. &ldquo;Monsieur, my respects to you&rdquo;; and
+      he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have consulted
+      an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, in a
+      hesitating voice. &ldquo;If you will allow me, I will go to Amsterdam to-morrow
+      and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear Marguerite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile and a
+      tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He paused,
+      looking at Felicie and Martha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak before my sister,&rdquo; said Marguerite. &ldquo;She is so docile and
+      courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned to
+      our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see for
+      herself how necessary courage is to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew some
+      pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us, Martha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Marguerite,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+      conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of his
+      voice, &ldquo;I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers who
+      still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled timber.
+      To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name of Monsieur
+      Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an injunction upon
+      them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will have returned, the
+      family council can be called together, and Gabriel put in possession of
+      his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and your brother being thus
+      authorized to use those rights, you will demand your share in the proceeds
+      of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot refuse you the two hundred thousand
+      francs on which the injunction will have been put; as to the remaining
+      hundred thousand which is due to you, you must obtain a mortgage on this
+      house. Monsieur Conyncks will demand securities for the three hundred
+      thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean. Under these circumstances your
+      father will be obliged to mortgage his property on the plain of Orchies,
+      which he has already encumbered to the amount of three hundred thousand
+      francs. The law gives a retrospective priority to the claims of minors;
+      and that will save you. Monsieur Claes&rsquo;s hands will be tied for the
+      future; your property becomes inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on
+      his own estates because they will be held as security for other sums.
+      Moreover, the whole can be done quietly, without scandal or legal
+      proceedings. Your father will be forced to greater prudence in making his
+      researches, even if he cannot be persuaded to relinquish them altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marguerite, &ldquo;but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+      living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain a
+      mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live here.
+      The proceeds of my father&rsquo;s property in the country will pay the interest
+      on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but how are we to
+      live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, &ldquo;by investing the fifty thousand
+      francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get, according
+      to present rates, more than four thousand francs&rsquo; income, which will
+      suffice to pay your brother&rsquo;s board and lodging and all his other expenses
+      in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is of age, therefore
+      you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it, and you will have one
+      expense the less. Besides, you will have your own fifty thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father will ask me for them,&rdquo; she said in a frightened tone; &ldquo;and I
+      shall not be able to refuse him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing yourself.
+      Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel&rsquo;s name: it will bring you
+      twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who are emancipated
+      cannot sell property without permission of the family council; you will
+      thus gain three years&rsquo; peace of mind. By that time your father will either
+      have solved his problem or renounced it; and Gabriel, then of age, will
+      reinvest the money in your own name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which she
+      did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see this
+      pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought with him
+      to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of minors; she
+      quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural penetration of
+      women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabriel came home to his father&rsquo;s house on the following day. When
+      Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his admission to
+      the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor with a wave of
+      his hand, and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my brother,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+      laboratory, &ldquo;work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+      practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass your
+      time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits which
+      ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly three
+      thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for your
+      pocket-money; that is surely enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will answer for him,&rdquo; said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on his
+      pupil&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite, had
+      obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely proposed
+      by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to face with
+      the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense of honor allowed
+      no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the timber to which he
+      had consented at a moment when he was harassed by creditors, submitted to
+      all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair the almost involuntary wrong
+      that he had done to his children, he signed the deeds in a preoccupied
+      way. He was now as careless and improvident as a Negro who sells his wife
+      in the morning for a drop of brandy, and cries for her at night. He gave
+      no thought to even the immediate future, and never asked himself what
+      resources he would have when his last ducat was melted up. He pursued his
+      work and continued his purchases, apparently unaware that he was now no
+      more than the titular owner of his house and lands, and that he could not,
+      thanks to the severity of the laws, raise another penny upon a property of
+      which he was now, as it were, the legal guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters paid
+      the costs of Jean&rsquo;s education and met all the expenses of the household
+      out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum placed in the
+      Grand-Livre in Gabriel&rsquo;s name, which he punctually remitted to them.
+      Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in December of that year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+      sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house, and
+      all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and forks
+      that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and these she now
+      ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day Marguerite had
+      kept silence towards her father on the subject of his depredations, but
+      that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to leave her alone with
+      him, and when he seated himself as usual by the corner of the parlor
+      fireplace, she said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything, even
+      your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I am forced
+      to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely enough to live
+      on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night and day to pay for
+      the schooling of little Jean with the price of the lace dress we are now
+      making. My dear father, I implore you to give up your researches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished; I shall
+      have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved undiscoverable.
+      You will have millions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give us meanwhile the bread to eat,&rdquo; replied Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bread? is there no bread here?&rdquo; said Claes, with a frightened air. &ldquo;No
+      bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been cleared
+      and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies, the rents
+      scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have borrowed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what are we living on?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite held up her needle and continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gabriel&rsquo;s income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both ends
+      meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that I
+      do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think I
+      have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for potash,
+      or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+      judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold everything,&mdash;pictures,
+      tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain from making debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to make any more!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any more?&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;then you have some?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mere trifles,&rdquo; he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the lowering
+      of her father&rsquo;s character, and suffered from it so much that she dared not
+      question him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+      exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+      banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+      notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that the
+      house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same amount,
+      falling due in consecutive months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All is over!&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;the time has come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+      steps, talking to herself:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred thousand francs!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I must find them, or see my
+      father in prison. What am I to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
+      the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
+      brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
+      here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
+      products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
+      pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
+      and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
+      upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure of
+      Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a workman,
+      his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered it. His eyes
+      were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough. The receiver of
+      this instrument was covered with a lens made of double convex glasses, the
+      space between the glasses being filled with alchohol, which focussed the
+      light coming through one of the compartments of the rose-window of the
+      garret. The shelf of the receiver communicated with the wire of an immense
+      galvanic battery. Lemulquinier, busy at the moment in moving the pedestal
+      of the machine, which was placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens
+      in a perpendicular direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his
+      face black with dust, and called out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! mademoiselle, don&rsquo;t come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument, and
+      receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+      protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads of silver,
+      his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the strangeness of the
+      objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts of the vast garret
+      from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring, all contributed to
+      startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, &ldquo;Send away
+      Lemulquinier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
+      has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching for
+      every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a complete
+      vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents. At this very
+      moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is about to show
+      results which I alone&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in paying
+      your notes of hand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
+      francs by four o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable this
+      month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I could
+      only have a July sun the experiment would be successful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears rolled
+      from his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur is quite right,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier; &ldquo;it is all the fault of that
+      rascally sun which is too feeble,&mdash;the coward, the lazy thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave us, Mulquinier,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I see a new experiment!&rdquo; cried Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, lay aside your experiments,&rdquo; said his daughter, when they were
+      alone. &ldquo;You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not a
+      penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will become
+      of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs and the
+      name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow it. I
+      shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful to see
+      you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our position; see
+      reason at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madness!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his luminous
+      eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and repeated the
+      word &ldquo;Madness!&rdquo; so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;your mother would never have uttered that word to me. She
+      was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned a science
+      to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human race; she
+      knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The feelings of a
+      loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial affection. Yes, Love is
+      above all other feelings. See reason!&rdquo; he went on, striking his breast.
+      &ldquo;Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say we are poor; well, my
+      daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your father, obey me. I will make you
+      rich when I please. Your fortune? it is a pittance! When I find the
+      solvent of carbon I will fill your parlor with diamonds, and they are but
+      a scintilla of what I seek. You can well afford to wait while I consume my
+      life in superhuman efforts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you have
+      already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of my
+      mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him, doubtless,
+      as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to him, as she
+      sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving myself wholly
+      to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling you to render an
+      account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past and think of the
+      present. I am here now to represent the necessity which you have created
+      for yourself. You must have money to meet your notes&mdash;do you
+      understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but the portrait of
+      your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of my mother, who felt
+      herself too feeble to defend her children against their father; she
+      ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my brothers and my sister;
+      I come, father, in the name of all the Claes, and I command you to give up
+      your experiments, or earn the means of pursuing them hereafter, if pursue
+      them you must. If you arm yourself with the power of your paternity, which
+      you employ only for our destruction, I have on my side your ancestors and
+      your honor, whose voice is louder than that of chemistry. The Family is
+      greater than Science. I have been too long your daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you choose to be my executioner,&rdquo; he said, in a feeble voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part she
+      had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother&rsquo;s voice saying to
+      her, &ldquo;Do not oppose your father too much; love him well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder,&rdquo; said
+      Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. &ldquo;We were just
+      going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap of July
+      sun, for monsieur,&mdash;ah, what a man! he&rsquo;s almost in the shoes of the
+      good God himself!&mdash;was almost within THAT,&rdquo; he said to Josette,
+      clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, &ldquo;of getting hold of the
+      Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about notes
+      of hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, pay them yourself,&rdquo; said Martha, &ldquo;out of your wages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the butter for my bread?&rdquo; said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the money to buy it?&rdquo; she answered, sharply. &ldquo;Come, old villain,
+      if you make gold in that devil&rsquo;s kitchen of yours, why don&rsquo;t you make
+      butter? &lsquo;Twouldn&rsquo;t be half so difficult, and you could sell it in the
+      market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The young
+      ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to be
+      better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won&rsquo;t spend more than one
+      hundred francs a month for the whole household. There&rsquo;s only one dinner
+      for all. If you want dainties you&rsquo;ve got your furnaces upstairs where you
+      fricassee pearls till there&rsquo;s nothing else talked of in town. Get your
+      roast chickens up there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will go and buy something to eat with his own money,&rdquo; said Martha;
+      &ldquo;all the better,&mdash;it is just so much saved. Isn&rsquo;t he stingy, the old
+      scarecrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Starve him! that&rsquo;s the only way to manage him,&rdquo; said Josette. &ldquo;For a week
+      past he hasn&rsquo;t rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for he is
+      always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the present
+      of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on them, I can
+      tell him that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; exclaimed Martha, &ldquo;I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her wizard
+      of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking a Christian
+      blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he&rsquo;d be burned alive; but people
+      here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the gallery.
+      She reached her room, took out her mother&rsquo;s letter, and read as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  My Child,&mdash;If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,&mdash;if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,&mdash;leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,&mdash;I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Josephine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
+      uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
+      entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her children
+      should present the paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martha,&rdquo; cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; &ldquo;go to
+      Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.&mdash;Noble,
+      discreet heart! he never told me,&rdquo; she thought; &ldquo;though all my griefs and
+      cares are his, he never told me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have kept a secret from me,&rdquo; she said, showing him her mother&rsquo;s
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel bent his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, are you in great trouble?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;be my support,&mdash;you, whom my mother calls &lsquo;our
+      good Emmanuel.&rsquo;&rdquo; She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
+      knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first saw
+      you in the gallery,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I scarcely dared to hope the time might
+      come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know my word is
+      sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your mother&rsquo;s
+      wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have saved us,&rdquo; she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to go
+      down to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+      Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
+      found themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must pay those notes at once,&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;If Merkstus holds them
+      all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
+      seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
+      ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
+      asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me. Oh,
+      Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!&rdquo; she said, weeping and
+      resting her forehead against the young man&rsquo;s heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked protection,
+      was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in melancholy and
+      restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full, was forced to
+      overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+      nothing,&mdash;neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live
+      in that garret, where the air is stifling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
+      &lsquo;My kingdom for a horse&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;He is pitiless; and in that you
+      must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
+      fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours nor
+      his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give him my fortune?&rdquo; she said, pressing her lover&rsquo;s hand and looking at
+      him with ardor in her eyes; &ldquo;you advise it, you!&mdash;and Pierquin told a
+      hundred lies to make me keep it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes I long for you
+      without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want you
+      rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+      grandeurs of wealth can separate us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ourselves!&rdquo; he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+      &ldquo;The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head. To reach
+      the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no consciousness of
+      justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he has dissipated&mdash;he,
+      so great, so noble, so upright&mdash;the property of the children he was
+      bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have fallen! My God! what is
+      this thing he seeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+      family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
+      for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless you
+      must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+      children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
+      ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
+      nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor mother is happy,&rdquo; said Marguerite; &ldquo;she would have suffered a
+      thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+      Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is an end,&rdquo; said Emmanuel. &ldquo;When you have nothing left, Monsieur
+      Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him stop now, then,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;for we are without a penny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes&rsquo;s notes and returned, bringing them
+      to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few moments
+      before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter noticed the
+      signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father, reason and
+      judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard, then into
+      the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his daughter, he
+      came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+      tenderness, &ldquo;forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done wrong.
+      You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable wretch. I
+      will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold,&rdquo; he went on, pointing
+      to the martyr&rsquo;s portrait. &ldquo;He died for Liberty, I die for Science; he is
+      venerated, I am hated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hated? oh, my father, no,&rdquo; she cried, throwing herself on his breast; &ldquo;we
+      all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?&rdquo; she said, turning to her sister who
+      came in at the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, dear father?&rdquo; said his youngest daughter, taking his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have ruined you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Felicie, &ldquo;but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+      always at the head of his class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See, father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial way
+      to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock, &ldquo;here
+      are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing left to
+      pay them with&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have money?&rdquo; whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
+      from his surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of joy
+      and hope in her father&rsquo;s face as he looked about him to discover the gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have my own fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to me,&rdquo; he said with a rapacious gesture; &ldquo;I will return you a
+      hundred-fold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will give it to you,&rdquo; answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+      Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear daughter!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you save my life. I have thought of a
+      last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I do
+      not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms, my
+      darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You give me
+      glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to heap
+      treasures upon my children&mdash;yes! I will load you with jewels, with
+      wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed his daughter&rsquo;s forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
+      testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
+      obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at her
+      eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his mistress:
+      if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and rose to fulfil
+      it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his attentions, which
+      were painfully out of keeping with his premature old age. To all these
+      cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast of actual distress,
+      shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a glance along the empty
+      shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; he said, following her eyes, &ldquo;in six months we shall fill
+      them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
+      Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
+      beings&mdash;through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita,&rdquo; he said, smiling,
+      &ldquo;thy name is a prophecy. &lsquo;Margarita&rsquo; means a pearl. Sterne says so
+      somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
+      would amuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;we have
+      suffered enough already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
+      be rich and all-powerful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle has got such a good heart,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier, whose seamed
+      face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all the
+      natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
+      Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic fluid;
+      he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit, which once
+      fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters into his
+      heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first time in many
+      months, the father and the children reunited. The young professor, in
+      spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the scene; for Claes&rsquo;s
+      manners and conversation had recovered their former irresistible
+      seduction!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+      ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+      nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
+      More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
+      are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget all;
+      they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own souls,
+      know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of all this.
+      If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their power to observe
+      and recognize that which goes on around them, they are satisfied with
+      having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them on, and they
+      frequently make false application of the knowledge they have acquired
+      about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their social apathy, or
+      they drop from the world of thought to the world of life; at such times
+      they come with well-stored memories, and are by no means strangers to what
+      is happening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the brain,
+      knew his daughter&rsquo;s whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the history of
+      the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed this
+      delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it. It was
+      the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were unable to
+      resist it. The evening passed delightfully,&mdash;contrasting with the
+      griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When Balthazar
+      retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light and bathing
+      them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some embarrassment
+      of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in gold, the
+      possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them on the
+      work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she was mending;
+      and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the money. When he
+      returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o&rsquo;clock struck; Martha, who sat
+      up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where can we hide it?&rdquo; said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure of
+      playing with the gold ducats,&mdash;a childish amusement which proved
+      disastrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow,&rdquo; said Emmanuel; &ldquo;you
+      can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of looking
+      for them there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table to
+      the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry, and let
+      fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and the coins
+      were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor door; the
+      avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing,&rdquo; he said, looking first at his daughter, whose terror
+      nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had hastily sprung
+      up,&mdash;though his attitude beside the pedestal was sufficiently
+      significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was horrible, the
+      scattering of it prophetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not be mistaken,&rdquo; said Balthazar, sitting down; &ldquo;I heard the
+      sound of gold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were beating
+      so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking of a
+      clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Monsieur de Solis,&rdquo; said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a glance
+      which meant, &ldquo;Come to my rescue and help me to save this money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What gold is this?&rdquo; resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and Emmanuel
+      a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it to
+      me that I may pay our debts honorably,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar caught
+      him by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must not escape my thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle Marguerite,
+      who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,&rdquo; Emmanuel
+      replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an almost
+      imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not allow that,&rdquo; said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of paper
+      from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+      astonished young people. &ldquo;How much is it?&rdquo; His eager passion made him more
+      astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be his.
+      Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us count it,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are six thousand ducats,&rdquo; said Emmanuel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventy thousand francs,&rdquo; remarked Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+      technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred thousand
+      francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means of paying: you
+      are therefore unable to give me any security. These one hundred and
+      seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who can dispose of
+      them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge that she will sign
+      a deed securing them to me on her share of the now denuded land of the
+      forest of Waignies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+      that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel&rsquo;s purity of soul. Brought up
+      by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the young
+      man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart and life
+      to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, monsieur,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;I thought you had more confidence in a
+      man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown out
+      by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love me, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
+      them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed him to
+      do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand ducats
+      were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, I must have that money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you take it, it will be robbery,&rdquo; she replied coldly. &ldquo;Hear me,
+      father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths a
+      day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to kill your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We avenge our mother,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the spot where Madame Claes
+      died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use those
+      words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great problem&mdash;but
+      no, you cannot comprehend me,&rdquo; he cried in accents of despair. &ldquo;Come, give
+      me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes, I know I caused your
+      mother pain: I have dissipated&mdash;to use the word of fools&mdash;my own
+      fortune and injured yours; I know my children are sacrificed for a thing
+      you call madness; but my angel, my darling, my love, my Marguerite, hear
+      me! If I do not now succeed, I will give myself up to you; I will obey you
+      as you are bound to obey me; I will do your will; you shall take charge of
+      all my property; I will no longer be the guardian of my children; I pledge
+      myself to lay down my authority. I swear by your mother&rsquo;s memory!&rdquo; he
+      cried, shedding tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes, thinking
+      she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me&mdash;give it!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What are
+      sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this will
+      kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
+      labors; I will leave Flanders,&mdash;France even, if you demand it; I will
+      go away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes I
+      have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on his
+      knees, and continued, still weeping:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
+      myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall say
+      I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and incapable.
+      And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands. You may beat
+      me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as the best of
+      daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were my blood, my life&rsquo;s blood, I would give it to you,&rdquo; she cried;
+      &ldquo;but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister? No.
+      Cease, cease!&rdquo; she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her father&rsquo;s
+      caressing hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sixty thousand francs and two months,&rdquo; he said, rising in anger; &ldquo;that is
+      all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth. I curse
+      you!&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;you are no daughter of mine, you are not a woman, you
+      have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!&mdash;Give it to me,
+      let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
+      forever,&rdquo;&mdash;and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous
+      energy towards the gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see us
+      now,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try to live, if you can, with your father&rsquo;s blood upon you,&rdquo; cried
+      Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+      room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
+      might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
+      replied by a negative motion of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, my daughter,&rdquo; he said, gently, &ldquo;may you live happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
+      her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness of
+      physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities of the
+      moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and Space,
+      where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to her that
+      days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up the stairs;
+      then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter his chamber.
+      Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with the piercing
+      keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without light, without
+      noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father with a pistol at
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take all!&rdquo; she cried, springing towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as old
+      men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+      disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with her
+      as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough, father, enough,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;remember your promise. If you do not
+      succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mother!&rdquo; she cried, turning towards Madame Claes&rsquo;s chamber, &ldquo;YOU
+      would have given him all&mdash;would you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep in peace,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;you are a good daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleep!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me old,
+      father, just as you slowly withered my mother&rsquo;s heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of the
+      glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend the
+      truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I comprehend our ruin,&rdquo; she said, leaving him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to spend
+      the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I yielded,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear life,&rdquo; he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, &ldquo;if you had
+      withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
+      adore you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave the future to me,&rdquo; cried the young man, with a radiant look; &ldquo;we
+      love each other, and all is well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+      Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune, and
+      he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained of the
+      sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and well-being
+      of the household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
+      her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might be, she
+      had come to hope in her father&rsquo;s genius. By an inexplicable phenomenon,
+      many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the flower of
+      Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said to herself, &ldquo;If
+      my father succeeds, we shall be happy.&rdquo; Claes and Lemulquinier alone said:
+      &ldquo;We shall succeed.&rdquo; Unhappily, from day to day the Searcher&rsquo;s face grew
+      sadder. Sometimes, when he came to dinner he dared not look at his
+      daughter; at other times he glanced at her in triumph. Marguerite employed
+      her evenings in making young de Solis explain to her many legal points and
+      difficulties. At last her masculine education was completed; she was
+      evidently preparing herself to execute the plan she had resolved upon if
+      her father were again vanquished in his duel with the Unknown (X).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+      bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound
+      now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife&rsquo;s chamber; he shuddered, no
+      doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his movements
+      betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science. Marguerite
+      brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while before dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not succeeded, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. &ldquo;I will not say one word of
+      reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of your
+      promise; it is surely sacred to you&mdash;you are a Claes. Your children
+      will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now belong to me;
+      you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be gentle, and I
+      will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I am going to leave
+      you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs; for,&rdquo; she said,
+      kissing him on his brow, &ldquo;you are now my child. I take Martha with me;
+      to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor child is only
+      seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you; therefore be generous,
+      do not ask her for money; she has only enough for the barest necessaries
+      of the household. Take courage: renounce your labors and your thoughts for
+      three or four years. The great problem may ripen towards discovery; by
+      that time I shall have gathered the money that is necessary to solve it,&mdash;and
+      you will solve it. Tell me, father, your queen is clement, is she not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then all is not lost?&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not if you keep your word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will obey you, my daughter,&rdquo; answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his great-niece.
+      He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain long enough for
+      Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements. Monsieur Claes
+      received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously sad and
+      humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with blunt
+      frankness while they were breakfasting:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,&mdash;a
+      ruinous passion, but we all have our manias.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear uncle!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of a
+      Claes is there,&rdquo; said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, &ldquo;and here,&rdquo; striking
+      his heart; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think so? I count upon you: and for that reason,
+      having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use in your
+      service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Balthazar, &ldquo;I will repay you with treasures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,&rdquo;
+       replied Conyncks, sternly. &ldquo;Our ancestor has those words engraved upon his
+      brow,&rdquo; he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+      directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur Conyncks
+      for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a daughter twelve
+      years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune. It was not
+      impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the good people of
+      Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her great-uncle. The
+      rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot haste
+      to the House of Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator. For
+      the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile camps.
+      The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the latter
+      naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took place, as a
+      matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country into two warring
+      nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting, were among the chief
+      reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was accepted in the provinces.
+      Between these social camps, the one ultra-monarchical, the other
+      ultra-liberal, were a number of functionaries of various kinds, admitted,
+      according to their importance, to one or the other of these circles, and
+      who, at the moment of the fall of the legitimate power, were neutral. At
+      the beginning of the struggle between the nobility and the bourgeoisie,
+      the royalist &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the
+      liberal &ldquo;cafes&rdquo; so brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to
+      have cost the lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast
+      cannon, were unable to withstand such practice. The two societies
+      naturally became exclusive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+      aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
+      must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when he
+      felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
+      shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
+      fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
+      think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were all
+      among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper circle
+      by means of some creditable alliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto kept
+      them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the old
+      aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him from
+      sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter of the
+      Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social vanity so
+      eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned to his
+      allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary sacrifices
+      to conclude a marriage which should realize all his ambitions. He kept
+      company with Balthazar and Felicie during Marguerite&rsquo;s absence; but in so
+      doing he discovered, rather late in the day, a formidable competitor in
+      Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the deceased abbe was thought to be
+      considerable, and to the eyes of a man who calculated all the affairs of
+      life in figures, the young heir seemed more powerful through his money
+      than through the seductions of the heart&mdash;as to which Pierquin never
+      made himself uneasy. In his mind the abbe&rsquo;s fortune restored the de Solis
+      name to all its pristine value. Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs
+      which reflected lustre on one another and doubled the illumination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+      whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin&rsquo;s spirit of emulation. He
+      tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
+      expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
+      airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared himself
+      disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let her know
+      that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who received for
+      the first time in her life the compliments of a man, listened to this
+      language, always sweet however deceptive; she took emptiness for depth,
+      and needing an object on which to fix the vague emotions of her heart, she
+      allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind. Envious perhaps, though quite
+      unconsciously, of the loving attentions with which Emmanuel surrounded her
+      sister, she doubtless wished to be, like Marguerite, the object of the
+      thoughts and cares of a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him over
+      Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in his
+      attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first intended.
+      Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps in the
+      lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon, little
+      colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind Emmanuel&rsquo;s
+      back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a meaning whose
+      insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes. Relying on his
+      intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the secret of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s journey, and to know if it were really a question of her
+      marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but, notwithstanding his
+      clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither Balthazar nor Felicie could
+      give him any light, for the good reason that they were in the dark
+      themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins of power seemed to have
+      followed its maxims and kept silence as to her projects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it difficult
+      to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in making him play
+      backgammon, the chemist&rsquo;s mind was never present; during most of the time
+      this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid. Shorn of his
+      expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes, a gambler
+      without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the burden of
+      hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of genius,
+      gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle,
+      fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even Pierquin could
+      not enter without respect the presence of that caged lion, whose eyes,
+      full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded from excess of
+      light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the mouth dared not
+      utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered face, whose fires
+      revived at the conception of a new experiment; then, as he looked about
+      the parlor, Balthazar&rsquo;s eyes would fasten on the spot where his wife had
+      died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand across the arid
+      pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense, and his head fell
+      forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the world, and the world
+      fell on his breast and crushed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+      Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man the
+      necessary money to renew his search,&mdash;so contagious are the
+      convictions of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes and
+      Marguerite had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly checked
+      the impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in efforts at
+      consolation which still further embittered the anguish of the doomed
+      Titan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in her
+      departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either to him
+      or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her he seemed
+      annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against him? Was he
+      humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of paternity to his own
+      child? Had he come to love her less because she was now the father, he the
+      child? Perhaps there were many of these reasons, many of these
+      inexpressible feelings which float like vapors through the soul, in the
+      mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite. However great may be the
+      great men of earth, be they known or unknown, fortunate or unfortunate in
+      their endeavors, all have likenesses which belong to human nature. By a
+      double misfortune they suffer through their greatness not less than
+      through their defects; and perhaps Balthazar needed to grow accustomed to
+      the pangs of wounded vanity. The life he was leading, the evenings when
+      these four persons met together in Marguerite&rsquo;s absence, were full of
+      sadness and vague, uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like a
+      parched-up soil; where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few rare
+      consolations, though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the strength
+      of the family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the return
+      of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her uncle who
+      remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no doubt to lend
+      the weight of his authority to some coup d&rsquo;etat planned by his niece.
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s return was made a family fete. Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis
+      were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar. When the
+      travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went to meet it
+      with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see her home once
+      more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the court-yard to
+      reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored like a guilty wife
+      who is unable to dissimulate; but her face recovered its serenity as she
+      looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed to gather strength to complete a
+      work she had secretly undertaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the dinner,
+      father and daughter watched each other with distrust and curiosity.
+      Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in Paris,
+      doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis imitated his
+      reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family secrets, said to
+      Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of liveliness:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen little of Paris,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I did not go there for
+      amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai once
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+      Opera; and even there she was uneasy,&rdquo; said Monsieur Conyncks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+      with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite and
+      Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the rest. As
+      the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew more and
+      more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but her motions,
+      her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen anxiety. Messieurs
+      Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of the secret feelings
+      which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared to encourage her by
+      expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept from a knowledge of the
+      steps that had been taken on his behalf, withdrew little by little from
+      his children and friends, and pointedly kept silence. Marguerite would no
+      doubt soon disclose what she had decided upon for his future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age a
+      man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and more
+      thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he would be
+      forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of those crises
+      in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by imagery. The
+      thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were laughing in the
+      fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was coming, but they held up
+      their heads and continued on their way. Monsieur Conyncks was the first to
+      leave the room, conducted by Balthazar to his chamber. During the latter&rsquo;s
+      absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis went away. Marguerite bade the
+      notary good-night with much affection; she said nothing to Emmanuel, but
+      she pressed his hand and gave him a tearful glance. She sent Felicie away,
+      and when Claes returned to the parlor he found his daughter alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My kind father,&rdquo; she said in a trembling voice, &ldquo;nothing could have made
+      me leave home but the serious position in which we found ourselves; but
+      now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest difficulties, I
+      return with some chances of deliverance for all of us. Thanks to your
+      name, and to my uncle&rsquo;s influence, and to the support of Monsieur de
+      Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under government as
+      receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth, they say, eighteen to
+      twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has given bonds as your security.
+      Here is the nomination,&rdquo; she added, drawing a paper from her bag. &ldquo;Your
+      life in Douai, in this house, during the coming years of privation and
+      sacrifice would be intolerable to you. Our father must be placed in a
+      situation at least equal to that in which he has always lived. I ask
+      nothing from the salary you will receive from this appointment; employ it
+      as you see fit. I will only beg you to remember that we have not a penny
+      of income, and that we must live on what Gabriel can give us out of his.
+      The town shall know nothing of our inner life. If you were still to live
+      in this house you would be an obstacle to the means my sister and I are
+      about to employ to restore comfort and ease to the home. Have I abused the
+      authority you gave me by putting you in a position to remake your own
+      fortune? In a few years, if you so will, you can easily become the
+      receiver-general.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other words, Marguerite,&rdquo; said Balthazar, gently, &ldquo;you turn me out of
+      my own house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not deserve that bitter reproach,&rdquo; replied the daughter, quelling
+      the tumultuous beatings of her heart. &ldquo;You will come back to us in a
+      manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your promise. You
+      are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he might himself
+      accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not go,&rdquo; said Balthazar, rising; &ldquo;I need no help from any one to
+      restore my property and pay what I owe to my children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be better, certainly,&rdquo; replied Marguerite, calmly. &ldquo;But now I
+      ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in a
+      few words. If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so that
+      you may remain its master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marguerite!&rdquo; cried Balthazar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In that case,&rdquo; she said, continuing her words without taking notice of
+      her father&rsquo;s anger, &ldquo;it will be necessary to notify the minister of your
+      refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post,
+      which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but for
+      certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children leave me!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave us or we must leave you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If I were your only
+      child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate;
+      but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and
+      despair. I promised it to her who died there,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the
+      place where her mother&rsquo;s bed had stood. &ldquo;We have hidden our troubles from
+      you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone. My father, we are
+      not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it. Courage is not
+      sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be incessantly
+      brought to nought by the caprices of a passion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear children,&rdquo; cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite&rsquo;s hand, &ldquo;I will
+      help you, I will work, I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is the means,&rdquo; she answered, showing him the official letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose
+      the fruits of ten years&rsquo; work, and the enormous sums of money which my
+      laboratory represents. There,&rdquo; he said, pointing towards the garret, &ldquo;are
+      our real resources.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, you must choose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my daughter, you are very hard,&rdquo; he replied, sitting down in an
+      armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+      Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple announcement
+      turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old valet
+      remarked hastily:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at eleven
+      o&rsquo;clock to breakfast. He didn&rsquo;t go to bed all night. At two in the morning
+      he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the window at the
+      laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him; he wept; he is in
+      trouble. Here&rsquo;s the famous month of July when the sun is able to enrich us
+      all, and if you only would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed
+      her father&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+      lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the
+      places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his
+      laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to
+      him,&mdash;just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to
+      whom the public holidays are so much lost time. Here were his hopes; here
+      the heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe
+      the breath of life. This alliance of places and things with men, which is
+      so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of science
+      and students. To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science,
+      to abandon the Problem,&mdash;it was death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+      scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+      memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in which
+      her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the parlor, and
+      quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite studied
+      his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of stormy
+      grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him
+      good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her to
+      his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to get my passport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed
+      the poor girl&rsquo;s heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears, and
+      then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at her
+      ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man who had
+      come to a decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle,&rdquo; he said to Monsieur Conyncks. &ldquo;I
+      have always wished to go there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a place where one can live cheaply,&rdquo; replied the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is our father going away?&rdquo; cried Felicie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must leave him with me to-day,&rdquo; said Balthazar, putting his son
+      beside him. &ldquo;I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a gloomy
+      day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress both thoughts
+      and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile. All instinctively
+      felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly declaring his ruin by
+      accepting an office and leaving his family, at Balthazar&rsquo;s age. At this
+      crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm; he seemed to accept nobly
+      the punishment of faults which the tyrannous power of genius had forced
+      him to commit. When the evening was over, and father and daughter were
+      again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day had shown himself tender
+      and affectionate as in the first years of his fatherhood, held out his
+      hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness that was mingled with
+      despair,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you satisfied with your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are worthy of HIM,&rdquo; said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of Van
+      Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to the
+      laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly cherished,
+      and which in that scene of his toil were living things to him. Master and
+      man looked at each other sadly as they entered the garret they were about
+      to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the various instruments over
+      which his thoughts so long had brooded; each was connected with some
+      experiment or some research. He sadly ordered Lemulquinier to evaporate
+      the gases and the dangerous acids, and to separate all substances which
+      might produce explosions. While taking these precautions, he gave way to
+      bitter regrets, like those uttered by a condemned man before going to the
+      scaffold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of a
+      voltaic pile were dipped, &ldquo;is an experiment whose results ought to be
+      watched. If it succeeds&mdash;dreadful thought!&mdash;my children will
+      have driven from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their
+      feet. In a combination of carbon and sulphur,&rdquo; he went on, speaking to
+      himself, &ldquo;carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+      crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+      decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is that how it would be?&rdquo; said Lemulquinier, contemplating his master
+      with admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now here,&rdquo; continued Balthazar, after a pause, &ldquo;the combination is
+      subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the conditions
+      of crystallization&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization,&rdquo; cried the old
+      valet impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will crystallize,&rdquo;
+       said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of indistinct thoughts
+      which were parts of a complete conception in his own mind; &ldquo;but if the
+      battery works under certain conditions of which I am ignorant&mdash;it
+      must be watched carefully&mdash;it is quite possible that&mdash;Ah! what
+      am I thinking of? It is no longer a question of chemistry, my friend; we
+      are to keep accounts in Bretagne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+      take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur de
+      Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science had
+      imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the carriage
+      with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the threshold. There,
+      as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with a despairing
+      pressure, he whispered in her ear, &ldquo;You are a good girl; I bear you no
+      ill-will&rdquo;; then she darted through the court-yard into the parlor, and
+      flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her mother had died, and
+      prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish the hard task that lay
+      before her. She was already strengthened by an inward voice, sounding in
+      her heart the encouragement of angels and the gratitude of her mother,
+      when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel, and Pierquin came in, after
+      watching the carriage until it disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!&rdquo; said Pierquin.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Save the family,&rdquo; she answered simply. &ldquo;We own nearly thirteen hundred
+      acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into three farms,
+      put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I believe that in a few
+      years, with patience and great economy, each of us,&rdquo; motioning to her
+      sister and brother, &ldquo;will have a farm of over four-hundred acres, which
+      may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly fifteen thousand francs. My
+      brother Gabriel will have this house, and all that now stands in his name
+      on the Grand-Livre, for his portion. We shall then be able to redeem our
+      father&rsquo;s property and return it to him free from all encumbrance, by
+      devoting our incomes, each of us, to paying off his debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite&rsquo;s
+      understanding of business and her cool judgment, &ldquo;you will need at least
+      two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your houses, and
+      purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is where my difficulties begin,&rdquo; she said, looking alternately at
+      Pierquin and de Solis; &ldquo;I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has already
+      spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father&rsquo;s security.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have friends!&rdquo; cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+      demoiselles Claes were &ldquo;four-hundred-thousand-franc girls,&rdquo; after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin, unfortunately
+      for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of his enthusiasm, and
+      he promptly added,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+      flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to find
+      her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at her sister,
+      who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the poor girl had
+      allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin&rsquo;s meaningless gallantries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall only pay me five per cent interest,&rdquo; went on the lawyer, &ldquo;and
+      refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take a
+      mortgage on your property. And don&rsquo;t be uneasy; you shall only have the
+      outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy farmers,
+      and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like a good
+      relation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too much
+      occupied in studying the changes of her sister&rsquo;s face to perceive it.
+      After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused smile, and
+      answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de Solis:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are indeed a good relation,&mdash;I expected nothing less of you; but
+      an interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall
+      wait till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has in
+      the Funds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+      you,&rdquo; said Marguerite to her sister. &ldquo;Jean, my angel, be a good boy; don&rsquo;t
+      tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as many new
+      ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie carried off her brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cousin,&rdquo; said Marguerite to Pierquin, &ldquo;and you, monsieur,&rdquo; she said to
+      Monsieur de Solis, &ldquo;I know you have been to see my father during my
+      absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+      less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let us
+      understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both with the
+      greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with Josette and
+      Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one, not even an old
+      friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the circumstances in which
+      we are placed, our conduct must be irreproachable. We are vowed to toil
+      and solitude for a long, long time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in contemplation of
+      Marguerite&rsquo;s head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know what to say. He took
+      leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against himself; for he suddenly
+      perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and that he, Pierquin, had just
+      behaved like a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pierquin, my friend,&rdquo; he said, apostrophizing himself in the street, &ldquo;if
+      a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool I am!
+      I&rsquo;ve got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business, without
+      counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets, which is likely
+      to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is so economical), and
+      I&rsquo;ve had the madness to ask interest from Mademoiselle Claes! I know those
+      two are jeering at me now! I mustn&rsquo;t think of Marguerite any more. No.
+      After all, Felicie is a sweet, gentle little creature, who will suit me
+      much better. Marguerite&rsquo;s character is iron; she would want to rule me&mdash;and&mdash;she
+      would rule me. Come, come, let&rsquo;s be generous; I wish I was not so much of
+      a lawyer: am I never to get that harness off my back? Bless my soul! I&rsquo;ll
+      begin to fall in love with Felicie, and I won&rsquo;t budge from that sentiment.
+      She will have a farm of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner or
+      later, will be worth twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for the
+      soil about Waignies is excellent. Just let my old uncle des Racquets die,
+      poor dear man, and I&rsquo;ll sell my practice and be a man of leisure, with
+      fifty&mdash;thou&mdash;sand&mdash;francs&mdash;a&mdash;year. My wife is a
+      Claes, I&rsquo;m allied to the great families. The deuce! we&rsquo;ll see if those
+      Courtevilles and Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come and
+      dine with a Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of Douai; I&rsquo;ll
+      obtain the cross, and get to be deputy&mdash;in short, everything. Ha, ha!
+      Pierquin, my boy, now keep yourself in hand; no more nonsense, because&mdash;yes,
+      on my word of honor&mdash;Felicie&mdash;Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes&mdash;loves
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to Marguerite,
+      who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They rose with one
+      impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but as they reached
+      the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist his joy, and, in a
+      voice that trembled with emotion, he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have three hundred thousand francs of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then where
+      did you get them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who first
+      said the word &lsquo;ourselves&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Emmanuel!&rdquo; she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held hers;
+      and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself into a low
+      chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for me to thank you,&rdquo; he said, with the voice of love, &ldquo;since you
+      accept all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear beloved one,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;this moment effaces many a grief
+      and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,&rdquo; she
+      continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, &ldquo;I know the way to
+      make it mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to witness.
+      The young man&rsquo;s eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did not notice
+      that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the words:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father&rsquo;s
+      indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself,&rdquo; she said, holding out
+      the ring. &ldquo;Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you&mdash;she would have
+      chosen you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside her,
+      offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is my mother&rsquo;s wedding-ring,&rdquo; he said, kissing it. &ldquo;My Marguerite,
+      am I to have no other pledge than this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, dear love,&rdquo; she said, greatly agitated, &ldquo;are we not doing wrong? We
+      have so long to wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of patience,&mdash;he
+      spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you; I have long
+      mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as I am His.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm. It
+      was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an overflowing
+      spring, poured forth its superabundance in little wavelets. The events
+      which separated these lovers produced a melancholy which only made their
+      happiness the keener, giving it a sense of something sharp, like pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact of
+      love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,&mdash;exchanging
+      a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this discretion cost him,
+      how hungry his soul was for that happiness so long desired, which had just
+      been consecrated by the betrothal of their hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here, little sister,&rdquo; said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+      neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+      generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their words
+      of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their projects. In
+      spite of her sister&rsquo;s joyous tone and lively manner, Felicie experienced a
+      sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite took her hand and felt it
+      tremble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle Felicie,&rdquo; said the elder, with her lips at her sister&rsquo;s ear.
+      &ldquo;I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence, and he has
+      said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them.&rdquo; Felicie blushed.
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t defend yourself, my angel,&rdquo; continued Marguerite, &ldquo;it is so natural
+      to love! Perhaps your dear nature will improve his; he is egotistical and
+      self-interested, but for all that he is a good man, and his defects may
+      even add to your happiness. He will love you as the best of his
+      possessions; you will be a part of his business affairs. Forgive me this
+      one word, dear love; you will soon correct the bad habit he has acquired
+      of seeing money in everything, by teaching him the business of the heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; added Marguerite, &ldquo;he has property; and his family belongs to
+      the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don&rsquo;t think I would oppose
+      your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Felicie let fall the words, &ldquo;Dear sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you may confide in me,&rdquo; cried Marguerite, &ldquo;sisters can surely tell
+      each other their secrets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+      delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When Marguerite,
+      expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie&rsquo;s
+      heart, she wound up their talk by saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and&mdash;then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Felicie, laughing, &ldquo;leave me to my own devices; I have a model
+      before my eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saucy child!&rdquo; exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
+      accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
+      and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
+      both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the two
+      were, to use his own expression, &ldquo;romantic and sentimental girls,&rdquo;
+       adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
+      Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
+      no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream; and
+      accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took her
+      mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk sentiment,&mdash;that
+      being one of the clauses of the primal contract which, according to social
+      usage, must precede the notarial contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear cousin,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you and I have not always been of one mind as to
+      the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but you do
+      now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great desire to
+      be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a fatal habit
+      which the legal profession forces upon us&mdash;you understand me? My
+      heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I have a
+      certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see that I do not
+      please you. It is my own fault; another has been more successful than I.
+      Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man, that I sincerely love
+      your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a brother; accept my purse,
+      take what you will from it,&mdash;the more you take the better you prove
+      your regard for me. I am wholly at your service&mdash;WITHOUT INTEREST,
+      you understand, neither at twelve nor at one quarter per cent. Let me be
+      thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I ask. Forgive my defects; they
+      come from business habits; my heart is good, and I would fling myself into
+      the Scarpe sooner than not make my wife happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is all satisfactory, cousin,&rdquo; answered Marguerite; &ldquo;but my sister&rsquo;s
+      choice depends upon herself and also on my father&rsquo;s will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, my dear cousin,&rdquo; said the lawyer, &ldquo;but you are the mother of
+      the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that you should
+      judge me rightly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+      Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+      Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the note
+      ran as follows: &ldquo;Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor of the
+      city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT of being
+      present, etc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite accepted the lawyer&rsquo;s offer only so far as it related to his
+      professional services, so that she might not in any degree compromise
+      either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister&rsquo;s future, or her father&rsquo;s
+      authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette (who
+      vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and seconded all
+      her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where she began
+      operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin.
+      Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that worthy
+      man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he had no wish
+      to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save Marguerite the
+      trouble of clearing the land and working the ground intended for the
+      farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers, who were anxious to
+      settle themselves in life, and he succeeded, through the prospect he held
+      out to them of the fertility of the land, in making them take leases of
+      the three farms on which the buildings were to be constructed. To gain
+      possession of the farms rent-free for three years the tenants bound
+      themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year the fourth year, twelve
+      thousand the sixth year, and fifteen thousand for the remainder of the
+      term; to drain the land, make the plantations, and purchase the cattle.
+      While the buildings were being put up the farmers were to clear the land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four years after Balthazar Claes&rsquo;s departure from his home Marguerite had
+      almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two hundred
+      thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up the farm
+      buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave girl,
+      whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town. Marguerite
+      superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases
+      with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so well
+      how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment. By the fifth
+      year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental of the
+      farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her brother&rsquo;s
+      name, and the proceeds of her father&rsquo;s property, towards paying off the
+      mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation which her
+      father&rsquo;s passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes. This
+      redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.
+      Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred
+      thousand francs of his uncle&rsquo;s bequest, and by joining to it twenty
+      thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her
+      management a large slice of the debts. This life of courage, privation,
+      and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went well,&mdash;everything
+      prospered under the administration and influence of Marguerite Claes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in the
+      department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his
+      great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he
+      succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her
+      father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole
+      Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired
+      its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand
+      of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left
+      Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired by
+      all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his
+      family and crown their happiness by his presence. Marguerite had often
+      expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had
+      formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day when
+      her father would return as master of his house. In her absence Pierquin
+      and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare a surprise which
+      should make the younger sister a sharer in the restoration of the House of
+      Claes. The two bought a number of fine pictures, which they presented to
+      Felicie to decorate the gallery. Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same
+      thing. Wishing to testify to Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in
+      her noble conduct and in the self-devotion with which she had fulfilled
+      her mother&rsquo;s dying mandate, he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures,
+      among them several of those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be
+      brought to Douai in Marguerite&rsquo;s absence, so that the Claes gallery might
+      once more be complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+      Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her sister
+      or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed; but since
+      her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming symptoms, the
+      gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony with which he lived
+      that he might spend the greater part of his salary in experiments the
+      results of which forever disappointed him. Though he was only sixty-five
+      years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His eyes were sunken in their
+      orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a few hairs remained as a fringe
+      around his skull; he allowed his beard to grow, and cut it off with
+      scissors when its length annoyed him; he was bent like a field-laborer,
+      and the condition of his clothes had reached a degree of wretchedness
+      which his decrepitude now rendered hideous. Thought still animated that
+      noble face, whose features were scarcely discernible under its wrinkles;
+      but the fixity of the eyes, a certain desperation of manner, a restless
+      uneasiness, were all diagnostics of insanity, or rather of many forms of
+      insanity. Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the look of a monomaniac; at
+      other times impatient anger at not seizing a secret which flitted before
+      his eyes like a will o&rsquo; the wisp brought symptoms of madness into his
+      face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter betrayed his irrationality:
+      but during the greater part of the time, he was sunk in a state of
+      complete depression which combined all the phases of insanity in the cold
+      melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and imperceptible these symptoms
+      may have been to the eye of strangers, they were, unfortunately, only too
+      plain to those who had known Balthazar Claes sublime in goodness, noble in
+      heart, stately in person,&mdash;a Claes of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige
+      now remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant toil,
+      had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+      expression of the old valet&rsquo;s face showed a singular mixture of anxiety
+      and admiration for his master which might easily have misled an onlooker.
+      Though he listened to Balthazar&rsquo;s words with respect, and followed his
+      every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of the servant of
+      science very much as a mother takes care of her child, and even seemed to
+      protect him, because in the vulgar details of life, to which Balthazar
+      gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These old men, wrapped in
+      one idea, confident of the reality of their hope, stirred by the same
+      breath, the one representing the shell, the other the soul of their mutual
+      existence, formed a spectacle at once tender and distressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living at
+      an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+      possession of his office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native
+      town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar&rsquo;s mind. His daughter&rsquo;s
+      letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning
+      his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution of
+      the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite&rsquo;s arrival with extreme
+      impatience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter threw herself into her father&rsquo;s arms and wept for joy. This
+      time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the
+      exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like
+      those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety of
+      the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father and saw
+      the change which had taken place in him since her last visit. Monsieur
+      Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on taking
+      Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence of his native
+      place might restore him to health and reason amid the happiness of a
+      recovered domestic life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the first transports of the heart were over,&mdash;which were far
+      warmer on Balthazar&rsquo;s part than Marguerite had expected,&mdash;he showed a
+      singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+      receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+      asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+      manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+      solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+      wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for a time,
+      and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had dwindled from
+      his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and the isolation of
+      his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and childish in all
+      matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His daughter awed
+      him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy she had
+      displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from him, of the
+      wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that had preyed
+      upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity he had long
+      neglected,&mdash;all these things affected his mind towards her, and
+      increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him beside
+      Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and seemed
+      to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman who rules
+      them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with
+      distress an expression of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault.
+      The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible
+      expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by toil, with the
+      puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance
+      of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that
+      littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her
+      father&rsquo;s sense of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to
+      reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they were alone
+      was to ask him,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you owe anything here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+      more about my affairs than I do myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+      involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does monsieur want?&rdquo; asked Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her heart
+      as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some
+      mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion
+      of his labors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+      without you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; began Lemulquinier, &ldquo;owes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+      intercepted; it humiliated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me all that my father owes,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who is
+      a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and lead,
+      and zinc and the reagents&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; asked Marguerite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a
+      spell,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I will give them to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an angel, my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad;
+      and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the
+      signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three
+      thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be frank with me, father,&rdquo; she said, letting him seat her on his knee;
+      &ldquo;you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without
+      an element of fear in the midst of the general joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Marguerite,&rdquo; he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a
+      grace that seemed a memory of her youth, &ldquo;you would scold me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly?&rdquo; he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. &ldquo;Can I
+      tell you all? will you pay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I owe&mdash;oh! I dare not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty thousand francs,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is just the sum I have laid by. I am
+      glad to give it to you,&rdquo; she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+      dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the chair
+      where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the Chiffrevilles
+      have written me three threatening letters; they were about to sue me,&mdash;me,
+      who would have made their fortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Marguerite in accents of despair, &ldquo;are you still
+      searching?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, still searching,&rdquo; he said, with the smile of a madman, &ldquo;and I shall
+      FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We? who are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he is
+      devoted to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+      Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+      should lower himself in her uncle&rsquo;s eyes. She was frightened at the
+      ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for the
+      solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who saw and
+      knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the liberation
+      of his fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+      gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and her
+      father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy over his
+      master such as common men without education are able to obtain over great
+      minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men, taking advantage
+      of concession after concession, aim at complete dominion with the
+      persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case the master had
+      contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows out of habit, like
+      that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab for the horse that
+      gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of this tyranny, resolving
+      to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke if it were real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite
+      to pay off her father&rsquo;s debts and request the manufacturers of chemical
+      products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any
+      orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of
+      dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This
+      corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which
+      augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the
+      thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his
+      own house, started for Douai.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+      escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the nearest
+      friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily diverted the
+      chemist&rsquo;s mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of his own Flanders
+      acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous company of his
+      family and friends gathering about him his emotion was so keen that the
+      tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids reddened, and he
+      held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming unable to release
+      them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from the
+      carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the
+      court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details with
+      a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew himself
+      erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears came into
+      his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care with which his
+      daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he formerly had sold,&mdash;a
+      visible sign that all the other disasters had been repaired. Breakfast was
+      served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and shelves were covered with
+      curios and silver-ware not less valuable than the treasures that formerly
+      stood there. Though the family meal lasted a long time, it was still too
+      short for the narratives which Balthazar exacted from each of his
+      children. The reaction of his moral being caused by this return to his
+      home wedded him once more to family happiness, and he was again a father.
+      His manners recovered their former dignity. At first the delight of
+      recovering possession kept him from dwelling on the means by which the
+      recovery had been brought about. His joy therefore was full and unalloyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into the
+      parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal papers
+      which the notary&rsquo;s clerk had laid upon a table, by which he was standing
+      as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and Balthazar,
+      astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said Pierquin, &ldquo;is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes
+      renders to his children. It is not very amusing,&rdquo; he added, laughing after
+      the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in speaking of
+      serious matters, &ldquo;but I must really oblige you to listen to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+      Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a reproach,
+      and his brow clouded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk began the reading. Balthazar&rsquo;s amazement increased as little by
+      little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the fortune
+      of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been sixteen
+      hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of the account
+      showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and as
+      well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In
+      consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar
+      was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released from
+      encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were signed,
+      Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys formerly
+      borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood, the
+      life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and looked
+      about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of her sex,
+      had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to see that all
+      the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared. Each member of the
+      family understood the old man&rsquo;s wish when the failing humid eyes sought
+      for the daughter,&mdash;who was seen by all present, with the eyes of the
+      soul, as an angel of strength and light within the house. Gabriel went to
+      find her. Hearing her step, Balthazar ran to clasp her in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man caught
+      her and strained her to his breast, &ldquo;I implore you not to lessen your
+      sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying out your wishes,
+      and be the sole author of the good that has been done here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter, folded
+      his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face recovered an
+      expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long years,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went back
+      to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children,&rdquo; he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former days
+      had made him so imposing, &ldquo;we all owe gratitude and thanks to my daughter
+      Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has fulfilled my
+      intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed by my labors,
+      gave the reins of our domestic government into her hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, now!&rdquo; cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, &ldquo;we must read the
+      marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids me to
+      draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur Raparlier is
+      coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+      Claes&rsquo;s return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+      arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company
+      quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality of
+      the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three
+      families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to
+      vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The
+      parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal
+      couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere shawls,
+      necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave as to those
+      who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone on every face, and
+      the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost sight of by the
+      spectators,&mdash;who often busy themselves in estimating it out of
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+      solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated, all
+      present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the parlor
+      on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next to them
+      stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on, Felicie and
+      Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only persons who were
+      seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who, for this occasion,
+      had taken Pierquin&rsquo;s duty. Jean stood behind his father. A score of ladies
+      elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from among the nearest relatives
+      of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the Claes, the mayor of Douai, who was
+      to marry the couples, the twelve witnesses chosen from among the nearest
+      friends of the three families, all, even the curate of Saint-Pierre,
+      remained standing and formed an imposing circle at the end of the parlor
+      next the court-yard. This homage paid by the whole assembly to Paternity,
+      which at such a moment shines with almost regal majesty, gave to the scene
+      a certain antique character. It was the only moment for sixteen long years
+      when Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if all
+      the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived; on
+      receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took up the
+      marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis, which was the
+      first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor opened and
+      Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur! monsieur!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a sign,
+      he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious of a shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dared not tell you, my child,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;but since you have
+      done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+      Lemulquinier lent me all his savings&mdash;the fruit of twenty years&rsquo; 
+      economy&mdash;for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+      finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah! my
+      angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled me in
+      my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,&mdash;without him I should have
+      died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur! monsieur!&rdquo; cried Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Balthazar, turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A diamond!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+      valet, who whispered in his ear,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been to the laboratory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on the
+      old Fleming which meant, &ldquo;You went before me to the laboratory!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; continued Lemulquinier, &ldquo;I found the diamond in the china capsule
+      which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur&mdash;and
+      see!&rdquo; he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose
+      brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My children, my friends,&rdquo; said Balthazar, &ldquo;forgive my old servant,
+      forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years
+      has produced&mdash;without me&mdash;a discovery I have sought for sixteen
+      years. How? My God, I know not&mdash;yes, I left sulphide of carbon under
+      the influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched
+      from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my
+      laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it not
+      awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that slow,
+      that sudden&mdash;what can I call it?&mdash;crystallization,
+      transformation, in short that miracle, then, then my children would have
+      been richer still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem
+      which I seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that
+      diamond upon my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied
+      affections have made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of
+      Science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+      words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+      being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected the souls
+      of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite, saying,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is thine, my angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the notary,
+      saying, &ldquo;Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as Talma
+      in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he reseated
+      himself, said in a low voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day I must be a father only.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and kissed
+      it respectfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No man was ever greater,&rdquo; said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to him;
+      &ldquo;no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened to
+      question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been formed;
+      but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident. He looked
+      through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an angry gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which no
+      doubt produces metals, diamonds,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was manifested there for one
+      moment, by one chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That chance was of course some natural effect,&rdquo; whispered a guest
+      belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation of
+      everything. &ldquo;At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has wasted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us forget it,&rdquo; said Balthazar, addressing his friends; &ldquo;I beg you to
+      say no more about it to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite took her father&rsquo;s arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms of
+      the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he entered
+      the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with pictures and
+      garnished with choice flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pictures!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;pictures!&mdash;and some of the old ones!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him; he
+      felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation came
+      before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all your own, father,&rdquo; said Marguerite, guessing the feelings that
+      oppressed his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;how many
+      times have you given life to your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+      heart,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+      thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+      little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+      him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by nearly
+      sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give them to
+      Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be made
+      comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us. Monsieur
+      de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,&mdash;a life without
+      luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you are able to
+      return it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father&rsquo;s
+      providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored and
+      furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently descended
+      to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand staircase, on every
+      step of which were rare plants and flowering shrubs. A silver service of
+      exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel to his father, attracted all
+      eyes to a luxury which was surprising to the inhabitants of a town where
+      such luxury is traditional. The servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of
+      Pierquin, as well as those of the Claes household, were assembled to serve
+      the repast. Seeing himself once more at the head of that table, surrounded
+      by friends and relatives and happy faces beaming with heartfelt joy,
+      Balthazar, behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was overcome by emotions
+      so deep and so imposing that all present kept silence, as men are silent
+      before great sorrows or great joys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear children,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+      home the prodigal father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+      others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+      present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however, and
+      the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character of a
+      family fete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to arrive
+      for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor of the
+      restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy day, and
+      gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which involved
+      Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His eldest son and
+      his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging to Monsieur Conyncks,
+      who was unwilling to separate from his daughter. Madame Pierquin also left
+      her father&rsquo;s house to do the honors of a fine mansion which Pierquin had
+      built, and where he desired to live in all the dignity of rank; for his
+      practise was sold, and his uncle des Racquets had died and left him a
+      large property scraped together by slow economy. Jean went to Paris to
+      finish his education, and Monsieur and Madame de Solis alone remained with
+      their father in the House de Claes. Balthazar made over to them the family
+      home in the rear house, and took up his own abode on the second floor of
+      the front building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father&rsquo;s material comfort,
+      aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from the
+      hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that happiness
+      entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever afforded a better
+      illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless felicity which all
+      women cherish in their dreams. The union of two beings so courageous in
+      the trials of life, who had loved each other through years with so sacred
+      an affection, drew forth the respectful admiration of the whole community.
+      Monsieur de Solis, who had long held an appointment as inspector-general
+      of the University, resigned those functions to enjoy his happiness more
+      freely, and remained at Douai where every one did such homage to his
+      character and attainments that his name was proposed as candidate for the
+      Electoral college whenever he should reach the required age. Marguerite,
+      who had shown herself so strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet
+      and tender woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and yet,
+      though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his ordinary income
+      sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory. Marguerite restored all the
+      old customs of the House of Claes, and gave a family fete every month in
+      honor of her father, at which the Pierquins and the Conyncks were present;
+      and she also received the upper ranks of society one day in the week at a
+      &ldquo;cafe&rdquo; which became celebrated. Though frequently absent-minded, Claes
+      took part in all these assemblages and became, to please his daughter, so
+      willingly a man of the world that the family were able to believe he had
+      renounced his search for the solution of the great problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis to
+      Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself and the
+      inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age, barrenness, and
+      other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the last lineal descendant
+      of the family and heir to the titles and estates of his ancient house.
+      Moreover, by one of those curious chances which seem impossible except in
+      a book, the house of Solis had acquired the territory and titles of the
+      Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite did not wish to separate from her husband,
+      who was to stay in Spain long enough to settle his affairs, and she was,
+      moreover, curious to see the castle of Casa-Real where her mother had
+      passed her childhood, and the city of Granada, the cradle of the de Solis
+      family. She left Douai, consigning the care of the house to Martha,
+      Josette, and Lemulquinier. Balthazar, to whom Marguerite had proposed a
+      journey into Spain, declined to accompany her on the ground of his
+      advanced age; but certain experiments which he had long meditated, and to
+      which he now trusted for the realization of his hopes were the real reason
+      of his refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+      than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until the
+      middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for Italy on
+      their way back to France. There, however, they received a letter from
+      Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months, their father had
+      completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to pay
+      Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries of the household.
+      The old valet had again sacrificed his little property to his master.
+      Balthazar was no longer willing to see any one, and would not even admit
+      his children to the house. Martha and Josette were dead. The coachman, the
+      cook, and the other servants had long been dismissed; the horses and
+      carriages were sold. Though Lemulquinier maintained the utmost secrecy as
+      to his master&rsquo;s proceedings, it was believed that the thousand francs
+      supplied by Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly on experiments. The
+      small amount of provisions which the old valet purchased in the town
+      seemed to show that the two old men contented themselves with the barest
+      necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House of Claes, Gabriel and
+      Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums which their father had again
+      borrowed on it. None of his children had the slightest influence upon the
+      old man, who at seventy years of age displayed extraordinary energy in
+      bending everything to his will, even in matters that were trivial.
+      Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had decided not to pay off his debts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter changed all Marguerite&rsquo;s travelling plans, and she immediately
+      took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her past savings
+      enabled her to pay off Balthazar&rsquo;s debts; but she wished to do more, she
+      wished to obey her mother&rsquo;s last injunction and save him from sinking
+      dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise enough ascendancy over
+      the old man to keep him from completing the work of ruin, at an age when
+      no fruitful toil could be expected from his enfeebled faculties. But she
+      was also anxious to control him without wounding his susceptibilities,&mdash;not
+      wishing to imitate the children of Sophocles, in case her father neared
+      the scientific result for which he had sacrificed so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+      September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+      ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which they
+      found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A shopkeeper
+      left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the noise of the
+      carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight of the return of
+      the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed also by a vague
+      curiosity as to what would happen in that house on Marguerite&rsquo;s return to
+      it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis&rsquo;s valet that old Claes had gone
+      out an hour before, and that Monsieur Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him
+      to walk on the ramparts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,&mdash;glad to escape a
+      scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to admit
+      her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and prepare
+      him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to notify
+      Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor. Horror
+      overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a fire
+      had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum and the
+      portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-room was empty:
+      there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal table, on
+      which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two forks and
+      spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his servant had
+      evidently just eaten. In a moment she had flown through her father&rsquo;s
+      portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same desolation as
+      the parlor and dining-room. The idea of the Alkahest had swept like a
+      conflagration through the building. Her father&rsquo;s bedroom had a bed, one
+      chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter candlestick with a
+      tallow candle burned almost to the socket. The house was so completely
+      stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at the windows. Every
+      object of the smallest value,&mdash;everything, even the kitchen utensils,
+      had been sold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even in
+      moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier&rsquo;s chamber and found
+      it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer she found
+      a pawnbroker&rsquo;s ticket for the old servant&rsquo;s watch which he had pledged
+      some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled with
+      scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her own
+      appartement and ordered the door to be broken open&mdash;her father had
+      respected it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst of
+      his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal feeling
+      and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of tenderness,
+      coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its climax, brought
+      about in Marguerite&rsquo;s soul one of those moral reactions against which the
+      coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the parlor to wait her
+      father&rsquo;s arrival, in a state of anxiety that was cruelly aggravated by
+      doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she about to see him? Ruined,
+      decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts his pride compelled him to
+      undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears flowed unconsciously from her
+      eyes as she looked about the desecrated sanctuary. The images of her whole
+      life, her past efforts, her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother
+      happy and unhappy,&mdash;all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene
+      of desolation, all were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected the
+      catastrophe that was to close her father&rsquo;s life,&mdash;that life at once
+      so grand and yet so miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+      lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+      enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the eyes
+      of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father who had
+      squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
+      philosopher&rsquo;s stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
+      this sceptical century, this century!&mdash;etc. They calumniated his
+      purposes and branded him with the name of &ldquo;alchemist,&rdquo; casting up to him
+      in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are uttered
+      on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others, genius is
+      smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate in which
+      Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and &ldquo;tutti quanti.&rdquo; The people are as
+      backward as kings in understanding the creations of genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+      little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from the
+      bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity among
+      persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,&mdash;two
+      sentiments big with contempt and with the &ldquo;vae victis&rdquo; with which the
+      masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune. Persons
+      often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the rose window
+      of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been consumed in
+      smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they pointed to him with
+      their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a mocking jest or a word
+      of pity would escape the lips of a working-man or some mere child. But
+      Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it was homage; he could
+      deceive him with impunity, for though the old man&rsquo;s eyes retained the
+      sublime clearness which results from the habit of living among great
+      thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+      Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+      common consent &ldquo;the House of Claes,&rdquo; was now called in the suburbs and the
+      country districts &ldquo;the Devil&rsquo;s House.&rdquo; Every outward sign, even the face
+      of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were current about
+      Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to purchase the few
+      provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking out the cheapest he
+      could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,&mdash;just as butchers
+      slip bones into their customers&rsquo; meat,&mdash;and he was fortunate, poor
+      creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not refuse to sell him
+      his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact with an imp of hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand old
+      man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes added to
+      this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have seen better
+      days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are ashamed to beg.
+      It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would be insulted in the
+      streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the family any public insult
+      would be, had for some time past sent two or three of his own servants to
+      follow the old man whenever he went out, and keep him in sight at a little
+      distance, for the purpose of protecting him if necessary,&mdash;the
+      revolution of July not having contributed to make the citizens respectful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+      Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the secret
+      guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back from the
+      ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the place
+      Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to school.
+      Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men, whose faces
+      brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys began to talk
+      of them. Generally, children&rsquo;s chatter ends in laughter; on this occasion
+      the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know the cruelty. Seven or
+      eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance, and examined the
+      strange old faces with smothered laughter and remarks which attracted
+      Lemulquinier&rsquo;s attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he was born a Wise Man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My papa says he makes gold,&rdquo; said another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and was
+      devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and said
+      boldly to Lemulquinier,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my little man,&rdquo; replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on the
+      cheek; &ldquo;we will give you some of you study well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! monsieur, give me some, too,&rdquo; was the general exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the old
+      men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by these
+      sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general shout of
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man,&rdquo; said Lemulquinier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hi, the old harlequin!&rdquo; cried the lads; &ldquo;the old sorcerer! you are
+      sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his cane;
+      they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A workman
+      who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier brandish his
+      cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them, and took their
+      part, crying out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down with the sorcerers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the old
+      men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin&rsquo;s servants,
+      appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
+      however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud. The
+      shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
+      chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
+      that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon of
+      introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body could
+      not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings, and he
+      fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who brought
+      him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and their
+      servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from following
+      the body of the old man to the door of his house, where Felicie and her
+      children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister had sent for,
+      were waiting to receive him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
+      less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing that
+      his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of his
+      impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every care
+      bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening, allowed
+      hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though skilfully
+      treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood; and when by
+      degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially affected,
+      perhaps because the old man&rsquo;s anger had concentrated all his forces upon
+      it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a law,
+      up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses, this
+      event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once more a
+      great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will that a few
+      hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience, his strength
+      of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished to arrest all
+      those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too late,&mdash;the evil
+      was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that the matter might be
+      allowed to drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+      denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+      seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+      more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he tried
+      to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned. At that
+      moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her he
+      colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He was
+      able to press his daughter&rsquo;s hand with his cold fingers, putting into that
+      pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had the power to
+      utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell of the brain
+      which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived. Worn out by
+      fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the gigantic
+      problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his memory, this
+      giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded him with
+      respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images of plenty
+      and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family. His every
+      look&mdash;by which alone he could manifest his feelings&mdash;was
+      unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
+      that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marguerite paid her father&rsquo;s debts, and restored a modern splendor to the
+      House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never left
+      the old man&rsquo;s bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
+      accomplish his slightest wish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+      attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+      children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+      bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+      occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+      family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which the
+      political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
+      listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely critical
+      night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned by the
+      nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took place in
+      the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to watch him,
+      fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward convulsion,
+      whose effects were like those of a last agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+      paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a sound;
+      his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed an untold
+      agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood out in drops
+      upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his bedside and
+      kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death made day by
+      day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual satisfaction
+      at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by the doctor,
+      hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading might not
+      relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently struggling. As
+      he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, &ldquo;DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,&rdquo;&mdash;which
+      startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite concerning a sale made
+      by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. Though
+      Emmanuel read in a low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to omit the
+      passage, Balthazar heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+      frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+      fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
+      illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
+      rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered with
+      a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, &ldquo;EUREKA!&rdquo;&mdash;I have
+      found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and died,
+      uttering an awful moan,&mdash;his convulsed eyes expressing to the last,
+      when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to Science the
+      secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,&mdash;too late!&mdash;by the
+      fleshless fingers of Death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+      referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Casa-Real, Duc de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+
+     Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Protez and Chiffreville
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Savaron de Savarus
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Alkahest
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: September, 1998  [Etext #1453]
+Posting Date: February 25, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+  DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say--May God grant it!
+
+  DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+
+(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than those
+of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish buildings, so
+naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent
+land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest
+of other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic
+preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain ignorant
+and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing the
+generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
+gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
+
+The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so closely
+allied to architecture that the majority of observers can reconstruct
+nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life, from the
+remains of public monuments or the relics of a home. Archaeology is to
+social nature what comparative anatomy is to organized nature. A mosaic
+tells the tale of a society, as the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus
+opens up a creative epoch. All things are linked together, and all
+are therefore deducible. Causes suggest effects, effects lead back to
+causes. Science resuscitates even the warts of the past ages.
+
+Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
+provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential facts.
+The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to
+man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been,
+and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is rare indeed that
+the picture of a locality where lives are lived does not recall to
+some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith. The comparison
+between a present which disappoints man's secret wishes and a future
+which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of sadness or of
+placid content.
+
+Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
+Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
+conclusion to man's uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
+family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
+comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
+beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
+sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
+Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life
+of feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
+nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
+superficial minds deny the heart's existence. The crowd prefers
+the abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
+persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
+immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity. Therefore,
+to impress this multitude carried away on the current of existence,
+passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the mark, to
+exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello, Mademoiselle de la
+Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds alone disapprove
+such excess, and respect only the energy represented by a finished
+execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The life of this
+essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions of happiness
+which the masses desire as the lot of the average citizen.
+
+A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies
+no weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan
+"far-niente." Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
+essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
+creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
+lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
+first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make the
+manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as cold
+as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has brought her
+power to bear, and has modified all things, even the effects of climate.
+If we observe attentively the productions of various parts of the globe,
+we are surprised to find that the prevailing tints from the temperate
+zones are gray or fawn, while the more brilliant colors belong to the
+products of the hotter climates. The manners and customs of a country
+must naturally conform to this law of nature.
+
+Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
+monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
+atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
+the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw
+it into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
+acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries of
+vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In exchange for
+its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that fairy glass-ware in
+which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From Austria it learned the
+ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular saying, takes three steps
+backward to one forward; while its trade with India poured into it the
+grotesque designs of China and the marvels of Japan.
+
+And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of all
+things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general storehouse
+of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco brought into
+one smoky outline the scattered features of its national physiognomy.
+Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of their territory,
+the Flemings became a people homogeneous through their pipes and
+beer.[*]
+
+    [*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+
+After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
+products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country of
+Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for itself
+an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs which
+bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its ideality and
+produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic grace, the swing of
+comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the bold flight of ode and
+epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile in discoveries, and
+trained to scientific discussions which demand time and the midnight
+oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal enjoyment. There men look
+exclusively to the thing that is: their thoughts are so scrupulously
+bent on supplying the wants of this life that they have never risen, in
+any direction, above the level of this present earth. The sole idea
+they have ever conceived of the future is that of a thrifty, prosaic
+statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came from a domestic desire to
+live as they liked, with their elbows on the table, and to take their
+ease under the projecting roofs of their own porches.
+
+The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
+comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
+craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
+compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
+on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
+the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
+houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
+monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and that
+of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient industry,
+are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked to show in
+human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could do no better
+than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster, capable, as was
+proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way, and without the
+incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-town.
+
+Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
+which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
+ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one of
+the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of Flemish
+life.
+
+Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
+and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
+buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of
+a venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
+fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
+left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality, its
+traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of Holland.
+Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick buildings, and
+the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding before the
+capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
+
+The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
+the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
+than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
+one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
+production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
+never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
+were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
+of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
+to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
+compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound to
+share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children, and
+property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The syndic's
+forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who were
+excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though he was,
+in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+
+The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
+execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions in
+the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of martyrs
+gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who punished revolt
+through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre over Douai, the
+Claes preserved their great wealth by allying themselves in marriage
+with the very noble family of Molina, whose elder branch, then poor,
+thus became rich enough to buy the county of Nourho which they had long
+held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
+are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
+represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
+Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
+the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
+over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
+francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
+the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a fortune.
+As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in litigation
+between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family which remained
+in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and assumed the title of
+Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a legal right to it. But
+the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to the haughty arrogance of
+Castile: after the civil rights were instituted, Balthazar Claes cast
+aside the ragged robes of his Spanish nobility for his more illustrious
+descent from the Ghent martyr.
+
+The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families exiled
+under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth century, the
+Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and traditions of
+their ancestors. They married into none but the purest burgher families,
+and required a certain number of aldermen and burgomasters in the
+pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her to the family. They
+sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or in Holland; so that
+the time-honored domestic customs might be perpetuated around their
+hearthstones. This social group became more and more restricted, until,
+at the close of the last century, it mustered only some seven or eight
+families of the parliamentary nobility, whose manners and flowing robes
+of office and magisterial gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with
+the habits of their life.
+
+The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that was
+well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty of
+the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made them the
+objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,--the House
+of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in that mansion,
+which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a type of the modest
+houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle Ages constructed for
+their homes.
+
+The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre of
+which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of the
+doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed arch
+bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a statuette
+of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left its mark
+upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the extreme care
+taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the passers-by to note
+all its details.
+
+The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white stone
+ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above the window
+in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a cross, which
+divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the transversal bar,
+placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made the lower sashes of
+the window nearly double the height of the upper, the latter rounding
+at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch was ornamented with
+three rows of brick, placed one above the other, the bricks alternately
+projecting or retreating to the depth of an inch, giving the effect of
+a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which were small and diamond-shaped,
+were set in very slender leading, painted red. The walls of the house,
+of brick jointed with white mortar, were braced at regular distances,
+and at the angles of the house, by stone courses.
+
+The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
+while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
+a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle
+threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something like
+steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where the
+rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the jaws
+of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a step at
+the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance, between the
+two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands, through which
+the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient usages.
+
+From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
+cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
+the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
+were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The
+front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened
+color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as
+a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which
+would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our climate and the
+effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our own health.
+
+The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
+the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
+eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
+moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
+the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in
+the red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
+immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave
+the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which would
+have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to
+take lodgings over the way.
+
+When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
+from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
+coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-door
+in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door escaped
+from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn, ponderous
+sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and through the
+depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron. This archway,
+painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily sprinkled with fresh
+sand, led into a large court-yard paved with smooth square stones of
+a greenish color. On the left were the linen-rooms, kitchens, and
+servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house, coal-house, and offices,
+whose doors, walls, and windows were decorated with designs kept
+exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading its way between four red
+walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy tints and reflections
+which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic appearance to faces, and
+even to trifling details.
+
+A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the court-yard,
+and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room on the
+ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-yard,
+and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same size as the
+house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each other, led at
+one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the court-yard, and
+were in line with the archway and the street door; so that a visitor
+entering the latter could see through to the greenery which draped the
+lower end of the garden. The front building, which was reserved for
+receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many objects of art and
+accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in the eyes of a Claes,
+nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the treasures contained in
+the parlor, where for over two centuries the family life had glided on.
+
+The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
+days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
+say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
+the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,--this
+Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of Bruges.
+The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich craftsman.
+Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van Huysum, grown
+rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-decoration in
+ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van Artevelde,--that
+brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of Flanders. This
+wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty panels, contained
+about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was held to be Van
+Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard the burghers
+whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his native town,
+proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if he would give
+him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had already despatched it to
+Douai.
+
+The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving, which
+Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr's memory, came to Douai to
+frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is therefore
+the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings now sell for
+nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place, Van Claes
+the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of the Court
+of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who venerated him as
+their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in stone with a very
+high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble during the last century;
+on it now stood an old clock and two candlesticks with five twisted
+branches, in bad taste, but of solid silver. The four windows were
+draped by wide curtains of red damask with a flowered black design,
+lined with white silk; the furniture, covered with the same material,
+had been renovated in the time of Louis XIV. The floor, evidently
+modern, was laid in large squares of white wood bordered with strips
+of oak. The ceiling, formed of many oval panels, in each of which Van
+Huysum had carved a grotesque mask, had been respected and allowed to
+keep the brown tones of the native Dutch oak.
+
+In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
+stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
+symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
+stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
+with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
+silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and sombre.
+The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none. Although
+on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the sunshine danced
+upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard admitted
+so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli scarcely
+glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be gorgeous
+on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled with soft
+shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the sun on the
+tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+
+It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes, in
+other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at present,
+it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+looking out upon the garden. The sun's rays fell obliquely upon the
+house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
+carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson halo
+projected through the damask curtains which draped the window. Even an
+ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this particular moment,
+would assuredly have produced a striking picture of a head that was full
+of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body, and that of the
+feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration of one who loses
+consciousness of physical being in the concentration of powers absorbed
+in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in the far future, just as
+sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at a ray of sunlight which
+pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line to the horizon.
+
+The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
+and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions. A
+dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
+as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
+folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
+light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show
+in preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
+impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
+expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
+that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most thoughtless
+mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive grief that is
+rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left on this woman's
+face like lava congealed about a crater. She might have been a
+dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal depths of
+wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human protector.
+
+The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
+nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
+the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
+heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead, very
+prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but beneath it
+sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting flames. Her face,
+altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color and pitted by the
+small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its oval, whose outline,
+though slightly impaired by time, preserved a finished elegance and
+dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of
+the soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in
+this strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and
+so sharply curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior
+malformation; yet there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it,
+and the partition between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy light
+shone through it. Though the lips, which were large and curved, betrayed
+the pride of noble birth, their expression was one of kindliness and
+natural courtesy.
+
+The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
+questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
+and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the world
+obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there were
+men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face and its
+tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm that was
+seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+
+She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in earlier
+days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of poesy now
+emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any former period of
+her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void, and expressing a
+nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though it was at the same
+time powerless over destiny.
+
+When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
+the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
+to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
+God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
+the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
+hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
+moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing to
+serve the dinner.
+
+At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her abstraction
+and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped away her
+tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the expression of
+pain that was stamped on every feature that she presently seemed in the
+state of happy indifference which comes with a life exempt from
+care. Whether it were that the habit of living in this house to which
+infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive certain natural effects
+that are imperceptible to the senses of others, but which persons under
+the influence of excessive feeling are keen to discover, or whether
+Nature, in compensation for her physical defects, had given her more
+delicate sensations than better organized beings,--it is certain that
+this woman had heard the steps of a man in a gallery built above the
+kitchens and the servants' hall, by which the front house communicated
+with the "back-quarter." The steps grew more distinct. Soon, without
+possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet
+her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man
+upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor.
+
+The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into
+thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate, headlong
+step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries, "Fire!" his
+feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a contrary
+gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow approach, the
+dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting
+spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have
+felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed
+devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two
+iron weights were striking them alternately. The mind recognized at once
+either the heavy, undecided step of an old man or the majestic tread of
+a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
+
+When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
+upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
+still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
+servants' hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door concealed
+in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading from the
+parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder, like the
+sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated in the
+armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face, moved by
+the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian Madonna.
+She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into the depths
+of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the wall which
+she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now pushed in with
+such brusque violence that the poor woman herself seemed jarred by the
+shock.
+
+Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
+look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
+erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
+right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom herself,
+although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her smile,
+contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting that line
+which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so deeply;
+her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she looked at
+Balthazar.
+
+It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the family
+of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family martyr who
+had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but as he stood
+there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age, though he
+was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the honorable
+likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because his labors,
+whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the spinal column
+was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad chest and square
+shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank and wasted, though
+nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical organization evidently once
+perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored to explain this anomalous
+figure by some possible singularities of the man's life.
+
+His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
+Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain protuberances
+which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and full blue eyes
+had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in searchers for occult
+causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life, was now elongated, and
+the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened wider from an involuntary
+tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-bones were very prominent,
+which made the cheeks themselves, already withered, seem more sunken;
+his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed in between the nose and a
+short chin, which projected sharply. The shape of the face, however, was
+long rather than oval, and the scientific doctrine which sees in every
+human face a likeness to an animal would have found its confirmation in
+that of Balthazar Claes, which bore a strong resemblance to a horse's
+head. The skin clung closely to the bones, as though some inward fire
+were incessantly drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space,
+as if to see the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though
+the flames that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+
+The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
+face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that of
+an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye, whose
+fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and by the
+inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes seemed
+to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the terrible
+reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The zealous
+fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this man;
+it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his mind
+expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with the
+anomalous peculiarities of his person.
+
+His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very long,
+had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not cleaned
+and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish household, the
+master alone took the strange liberty of being slovenly. His black cloth
+trousers were covered with stains, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his
+cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at the seams,--completing an array
+of signs, great and small, which in any other man would have betokened
+a poverty begotten of vice, but which in Balthazar Claes was the
+negligence of genius.
+
+Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
+the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
+and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
+than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for vices
+than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The profits
+accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote that the
+social world fears to square accounts with the man of learning in his
+lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by not forgiving his
+misfortunes or his poverty.
+
+If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present, Balthazar
+Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some sweet and
+companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful countenance, if the
+fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone with feeling, if he had
+ever looked humanly about him and returned to the real life of common
+things, it would indeed have been difficult not to do involuntary homage
+to the winning beauty of his face and the gracious soul that would then
+have shone from it. As it was, all who looked at him regretted that the
+man belonged no more to the world at large, and said to one another: "He
+must have been very handsome in his youth." A vulgar error! Never was
+Balthazar Claes's appearance more poetic than at this moment. Lavater,
+had he seen him, would fain have studied that head so full of patience,
+of Flemish loyalty, and pure morality,--where all was broad and noble,
+and passion seemed calm because it was strong.
+
+The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word
+was sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
+complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
+service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
+elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household,
+to manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
+living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
+with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
+the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
+enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+
+At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes that
+he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the woman who
+was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect, or nobility
+of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either they dress
+simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they make others
+forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which diverts the
+eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess a noble soul,
+but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the woman which
+gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up in one of the
+most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have learned good taste
+had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the desire of constantly
+pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to clothe herself admirably,
+and without producing incongruity between her elegance and the defects
+of her conformation. The bust, however, was defective in the shoulders
+only, one of which was noticeably much larger than the other.
+
+She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
+garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
+said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman's
+submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
+the pride of her Spanish nature:--
+
+"Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday since
+you have been to mass or vespers."
+
+Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands,
+and waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
+indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of those
+beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all their
+youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal to
+wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of physical
+disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a word, suffices
+to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel because it
+contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our nature leads us
+to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than pleasure coming in
+the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
+
+Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him, and
+said,--
+
+"Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers."
+
+He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
+magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
+short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
+
+"Why should they not combine within a given time?"
+
+"Is he going mad?" thought the wife, much terrified.
+
+To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
+by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to glance
+back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter of the
+Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
+came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
+manners in the society of Madame d'Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince
+of Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
+originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or wealth
+won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time gave the
+tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and friends
+ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment when that
+world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at first more
+attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of life. He
+frequented the society of scientific men, particularly Lavoisier, who
+at that time was better known to the world for his enormous fortune as
+a "fermier-general" than for his discoveries in chemistry,--though later
+the great chemist was to eclipse the man of wealth.
+
+Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated,
+and became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
+Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
+and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
+that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
+those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
+finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
+society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+
+The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
+his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so tender,
+which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far more fitted
+to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No gilded Parisian
+salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the panelled parlor and
+the little garden where his happy childhood had slipped away. A man
+must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--Paris, the city of
+cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp her with the arms of
+Science, Art, or Power.
+
+The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine's pigeon to
+its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
+Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
+of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
+had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar's father and mother had
+left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for a time
+in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to marry; he
+needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect had fastened
+upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of seeking a wife in
+Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened that no woman whom he
+met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had certain peculiar ideas as
+to marriage; from his youth he had been accused of never following the
+beaten track.
+
+One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
+then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a long
+discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck was
+destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that she
+was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar's old cousin, at whose
+house the discussion took place, assured his guests that, handsome or
+not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he a marrying
+man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of her parents'
+property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy of his name;
+thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing her future
+to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that Mademoiselle de
+Temninck would marry late in life and without property when, young and
+wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
+
+A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle
+de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first, Josephine de
+Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice, and refused to
+listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious; and to a poor girl
+who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring love in a young and
+handsome man carries with it such strong seduction that she finally
+consented to allow him to woo her.
+
+It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
+submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
+feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
+and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
+cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--emotions,
+terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought, therefore,
+to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of love, is the
+keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find once more the
+lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles; the passionate
+exaltations of the heart which the face must not betray; the fear
+that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy of being so; the
+hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself, and the magnetic
+propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of shades; the
+promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an intonation;
+trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden desires to speak
+and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the secret eloquence
+of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the mysterious workings
+of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine discernment which
+lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a flavor to silent
+devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love, and the weaknesses
+of its power.
+
+Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of soul.
+The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to win as
+the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the eye roused
+her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the courage to hide
+in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness which other women
+delight in making known by their manners,--wearing it proudly, like a
+coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar, the less she dared
+to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture, the question and
+answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to the man she loves,
+would they not be in her case mere humiliating speculation? A beautiful
+woman can be her natural self,--the world overlooks her little follies
+or her clumsiness; whereas a single criticising glance checks the
+noblest expression on the lips of an ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace
+of her gesture, gives timidity to her eyes and awkwardness to her whole
+bearing. She knows too well that to her alone the world condones no
+faults; she is denied the right to repair them; indeed, the chance to do
+so is never given. This necessity of being perfect and on her guard at
+every moment, must surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise?
+Such a woman can exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance.
+Where are the hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of
+bitter and stinging pity.
+
+These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
+and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her by
+the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making it
+apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense of
+embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest expression,
+and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her looks. Loving
+and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only when alone.
+Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she might have been
+enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow. Often, to test the
+love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing it, she refused to
+wear the draperies that concealed some portion of her defects, and her
+Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that Balthazar thought her
+beautiful as before.
+
+Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she yielded
+herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not seeking a
+domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house? whether he
+had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be satisfied
+with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a priceless
+value to the few short hours during which she trusted the sincerity and
+the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the world. Sometimes
+she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the inner consciousness
+of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such times she often wrung
+from Balthazar truths that were far from flattering; but she loved the
+embarrassment into which he fell when she had led him to say that what
+he loved in a woman was a noble soul and the devotion which made each
+day of life a constant happiness; and that after a few years of married
+life the handsomest of women was no more to a husband than the ugliest.
+After gathering up what there was of truth in all such paradoxes tending
+to reduce the value of beauty, Balthazar would suddenly perceive the
+ungraciousness of his remarks, and show the goodness of his heart by the
+delicate transitions of thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de
+Temninck that she was perfect in his eyes.
+
+The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
+woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
+being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling
+and sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
+fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did not
+believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however short
+its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
+
+Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
+unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
+with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
+in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
+increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
+the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted for
+fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
+into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
+character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
+harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
+some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets bickering.
+One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed; another kindly,
+but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and
+uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections
+as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the
+daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man of social life is
+essentially incomplete, without being signally to blame. Men of talent
+are as variable as barometers; genius alone is intrinsically good.
+
+For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
+the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone
+are capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
+equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
+asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
+in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he
+is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle
+and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is
+vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are disposed to
+take dull men as the small change for great ones.
+
+Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life. He
+delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like
+all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to
+develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
+happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
+grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
+century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the
+risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart
+the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother's
+milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied
+her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be that of
+a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was never
+exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity. He
+treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied
+against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty
+woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender;
+he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that
+crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a
+wife.
+
+Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
+and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
+was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was
+equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of
+his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
+wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+
+Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
+intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite,
+but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the
+genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind
+fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death.
+Balthazar's own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his
+wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she
+received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon
+the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her
+personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an
+ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied the life of each
+heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one another excluded the
+paltry things of existence, while it magnified the smallest accessories.
+
+The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
+he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--are
+they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
+go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To
+forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the glamour of
+a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the deification of
+her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written: "Blessed are the
+imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love." If this be so, surely
+beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts for too much in
+the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved for her beauty as
+another is married for her money. But the love inspired or bestowed by a
+woman disinherited of the frail advantages pursued by the sons of Adam,
+is true love, the mysterious passion, the ardent embrace of souls, a
+sentiment for which the day of disenchantment never comes. That woman
+has charms unknown to the world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws
+herself: she is beautiful with a meaning; her glory lies in making her
+imperfections forgotten, and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+
+The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by women
+in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra, Jeanne
+de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de
+Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered
+famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater
+number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic end
+of love.
+
+This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
+more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty is
+limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is infinite. Is
+not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian Nights are based?
+An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the axe, and subdued to
+herself the inconstancy of her master.
+
+By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write, but
+up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a
+convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first entrance into
+the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of
+dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she
+dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to
+have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good
+result; it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of
+mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world,
+she became intellectual and beautiful to her husband. During the first
+years of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least
+the knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society:
+but he was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the
+heart. Josephine never forgot anything that Claes told her relating
+to themselves; she remembered the most trifling circumstances of their
+happy life; but of her evening studies nothing remained to her on the
+morrow.
+
+This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife,
+but Madame Claes's understanding of the passion of love was so simple
+and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and
+the thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she
+managed always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that
+her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two persons love one another
+so well that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion,
+phenomena arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the
+conditions of life. It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not
+laughter, joy, and merriment. Then, when life is in full activity, when
+its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion,
+without considering either the means or the end.
+
+No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than
+Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her
+Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing; she
+knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth
+and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so
+near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of
+her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear
+which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish
+bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally
+happy,--preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness,
+possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort,
+supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything
+within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.
+
+The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
+born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost equal
+to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul, especially
+during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle between those
+nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it were, an enemy
+of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her face at the
+moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering over the quiet
+house begins, were caused by the fear of having sacrificed her children
+to her husband.
+
+In 1805, Madame Claes's brother died without children. The Spanish law
+does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did not
+seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar Claes
+was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully it,
+Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to that
+of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had so
+nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a marriage
+which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent alliance,
+seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to which this
+sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat difficult to
+determine.
+
+The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures, and
+objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add anything
+worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family through long
+periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One generation
+followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the necessity
+of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the taste became
+hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which adorned the gallery
+leading from the family building to the reception-rooms on the first
+floor of the front house, as well as some fifty others placed about the
+salons, were the product of the patient researches of three centuries.
+Among them were choice specimens of Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg,
+Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt,
+Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French and Italian pictures were in a
+minority, but all were authentic and masterly.
+
+Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
+Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in fact,
+each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which belongs in
+a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of Balthazar, a
+last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest
+known collection of tulips.
+
+Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
+and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was
+simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
+of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a
+country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
+basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
+old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
+ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the
+richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved
+the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of
+property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with
+limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.
+Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife's
+property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his
+own. The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living,
+and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the
+country, but which in ten years' time, if well-preserved, would return
+an enormous value.
+
+The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
+that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
+which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when
+she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.
+She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.
+Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where,
+indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the
+education of her children tended to keep her.
+
+Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
+household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
+conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
+secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar
+Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate,
+seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and
+fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the
+cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always had a leaning), and
+dispensed him from the duty of following a mania like his ancestors.
+
+At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
+first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause. One
+night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she felt
+it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and her
+submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar's confidence;
+which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an affection that she
+had never had the slightest opening for jealousy. Though certain of
+obtaining an answer whenever she should make the inquiry, she still
+retained enough of the earlier impressions of her life to dread a
+refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had its phases, and
+only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at which it destroyed
+the happiness of the family.
+
+However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
+months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
+character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
+Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
+the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he
+would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led
+by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them
+known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came, surely
+domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar
+became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would
+surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain
+that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than
+happy during several months.
+
+She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by
+him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows
+no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment
+without suffering. She waited for the return of her husband's affection,
+saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"--treating her
+happiness as though it were an absent friend.
+
+During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
+Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of
+her husband's abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an
+abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman's pride, hurt for
+the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which
+separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that time Balthazar's
+condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so wrapped up in his
+domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor
+carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the
+light of his Pepita's dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy,
+seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.
+
+The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
+ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to
+her that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
+seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair,
+then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of
+melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling
+herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating
+consideration for her in this secret occupation by which he secured
+to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his
+independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which make the
+happiness of many a marriage.
+
+Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt
+to read her husband's heart, and found it closed. Little by little,
+she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he
+neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children. There could
+be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that was not of the
+heart, but which, to a woman's mind, is not less withering. His love
+was dormant, not lost: this might be a consolation, but the misfortune
+remained the same.
+
+The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one
+word,--hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened
+that whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
+courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
+happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in the
+clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at least, to
+return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven brightened, she
+was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him with importunate
+questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to him, he would suddenly
+escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the gulf of meditation from
+which no word of hers could drag him.
+
+Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition began
+its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a loving
+woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she saw
+him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the fireplace,
+and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with terror the slow
+changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her eyes, sublime
+through love: the life of the soul was retreating from it; the structure
+remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the eyes were glassy, and
+seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were looking inward. When
+the children had gone to bed, and the silence and solitude oppressed
+her, Pepita would say, "My friend, are you ill?" and Balthazar would
+make no answer; or if he answered, he would come to himself with a
+quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and utter a "No" so
+harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the palpitating heart of
+his wife.
+
+Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her friends,
+Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The social world
+of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial towns, had made
+Balthazar's aberrations a topic of conversation, and many persons
+were aware of certain details that were still unknown to Madame Claes.
+Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a few friends
+expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she found herself
+compelled to defend her husband's peculiarities.
+
+"Monsieur Claes," she said, "has undertaken a work which wholly absorbs
+him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor of the
+family but to that of his country."
+
+This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
+town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
+places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
+reaction in favor of Balthazar.
+
+The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the garret
+of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning. After
+remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his wife and
+household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there all day.
+But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the humiliating
+medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her ignorance,
+that her husband constantly imported instruments of physical science,
+valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from Paris, and was on the
+highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher's Stone. She ought, so her
+kind friends added, to think of her children, and her own future; it was
+criminal not to use her influence to draw Monsieur Claes from the fatal
+path on which he had entered.
+
+Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady, silenced
+these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of her
+apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
+system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those little
+scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less timid at
+such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his change,
+the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband frowned, and
+replied:--
+
+"My dear, you could not understand it."
+
+Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret, gently
+complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts of one
+whose life she shared.
+
+"Very well, since it interests you so much," said Balthazar, taking his
+wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, "I will tell you that
+I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest man on
+earth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry,
+the aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself
+in the way, or that Madame Claes's secret anxieties made her less
+agreeable than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but
+her intimate friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his
+laboratory all day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only appeared
+in the bosom of his family at dinner-time.
+
+After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his
+country-house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes
+he went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving
+Madame Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing
+a fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
+other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to send
+into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and suffer
+till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which the gates
+closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful of the
+tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the happiness of
+getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of feeling to his
+wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept silence and dared not
+question him, for when she did so on the occasion of his first absence,
+he answered with an air of surprise:--
+
+"Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?"
+
+Passions never deceive. Madame Claes's anxieties corroborated the rumors
+she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her youth had
+taught her to understand the polite pity of the world. Resolved not to
+undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more into the privacy of
+her own house, now deserted by society and even by her nearest friends.
+
+Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+Balthazar's dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the
+least bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish
+life. At first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar's valet,
+Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing, but
+even that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when Balthazar,
+unaware of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of those that
+were stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+
+The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years, during
+which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was apparently and
+suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately reigned. Spanish
+by race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within her when she
+discovered her rival in a Science that allured her husband from her:
+torments of jealousy preyed upon her heart and renewed her love.
+What could she do against Science? Should she combat that tyrannous,
+unyielding, growing power? Could she kill an invisible rival? Could
+a woman, limited by nature, contend with an Idea whose delights are
+infinite, whose attractions are ever new? How make head against the
+fascination of ideas that spring the fresher and the lovelier out of
+difficulty, and entice a man so far from this world that he forgets even
+his dearest loves?
+
+At last one day, in spite of Balthazar's strict orders, Madame Claes
+resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his life
+was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
+her husband's labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
+mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory
+of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier
+alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent
+his witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the
+outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of
+the way. For a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with
+angry impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her--all that
+her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
+servant was preferred to a wife!
+
+The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
+the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar's anger. She had
+hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
+roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
+bottom.
+
+"God be praised! you are still alive!" he cried, raising her.
+
+A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
+husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+
+"My dear, I forbade you to come here," he said, sitting down on the
+stairs, as though prostrated. "The saints have saved your life! By what
+chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
+just escaped death."
+
+"Then I might have been happy!" she exclaimed.
+
+"My experiment has failed," continued Balthazar. "You alone could I
+forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs."
+
+Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+
+"Decompose nitrogen!" said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
+and burst into tears.
+
+The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have
+a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is
+for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves.
+More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when
+the language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from
+letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain
+as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in
+love than men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but
+his mind.
+
+To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed
+her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival
+might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who
+loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification
+like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and humiliated the
+feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she had reached a
+point where her ignorance parted her from her husband. Worse than all,
+last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he was often in
+danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share, nor even know,
+his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral prison from which
+there was no issue, in which there was no hope. Madame Claes resolved
+to know at least the outward attractions of this fatal science, and
+she began secretly to study chemistry in the books. From this time the
+family became, as it were, cloistered.
+
+Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
+the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
+we find it at the moment when this history begins.
+
+The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate
+women, Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the transaction,
+the rumors and conjectures spread through the town, forced Madame
+Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's notary and,
+disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret anxieties or let him
+guess them, and even ask her the humiliating question,--
+
+"How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?"
+
+Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
+grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of the
+same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the latter,
+though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins. Monsieur
+Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just succeeded
+to his father's practice, was the only person who now had access to the
+House of Claes.
+
+Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete solitude
+that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of the
+disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now well
+known throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that her
+husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which furnished him
+with chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to the fortune and
+credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and sent the supplies
+without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums of money which became
+due. Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain the bill for all the
+chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
+
+Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers
+of chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which
+amounted to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and Pierquin
+studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though
+some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were
+unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of precious
+metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities. The large
+sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of the articles,
+by the precautions needed in transporting some of them, more especially
+valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain rare chemicals,
+and finally by the cost of instruments made to order after the designs
+of Monsieur Claes himself.
+
+The notary had made inquiries, in his client's interest, as to Messieurs
+Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known integrity was
+sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their operations with Monsieur
+Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently sent information of results
+obtained by chemists in Paris, for the purpose of sparing him expense.
+Madame Claes begged the notary to keep the nature of these purchases
+from the knowledge of the people of Douai, lest they should declare the
+whole thing a mania; but Pierquin replied that he had already delayed to
+the very last moment the notarial deeds which the importance of the
+sum borrowed necessitated, in order not to lessen the respect in which
+Monsieur Claes was held. He then revealed the full extent of the evil,
+telling her plainly that if she could not find means to prevent her
+husband from thus madly making way with his property, in six months the
+patrimonial fortune of the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value.
+As for himself, he said, the remonstrances he had already made to his
+cousin, with all the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had
+been wholly unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was
+working for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+
+Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for two
+years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now added
+a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying. Women
+have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do they fear
+so much more than they hope in matters that concern the interests of
+this life? Why is their faith given only to religious ideas of a future
+existence? Why do they so ably foresee the catastrophes of fortune and
+the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment which unites them to the
+men they love gives them a sense by which they weigh force, measure
+faculties, understand tastes, passions, vices, virtues. The perpetual
+study of these causes in the midst of which they live gives them, no
+doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing effects in all possible relations
+of earthly life. What they see of the present enables them to judge
+of the future with an intuitive ability explained by the perfection
+of their nervous system, which allows them to seize the lightest
+indications of thought and feeling. Their whole being vibrates in
+communion with great moral convulsions. Either they feel, or they see.
+
+Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame
+Claes foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the
+deliberate ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of
+Balthazar; if it were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he
+was capable of throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute
+indifference. But what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal
+feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this woman
+that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had never come
+between them. Suddenly she found herself at times more mother than wife,
+though hitherto she had been more wife than mother. However ready she
+had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her children to the man who
+had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to whom she was still the
+only woman in the world, the remorse she felt for the weakness of her
+maternal love threw her into terrible alternations of feeling. As a
+wife, she suffered in heart; as a mother, through her children; as a
+Christian, for all.
+
+She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must be
+guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach him
+for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness he
+had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his purposes?
+And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the law, told
+her that parents were the depositaries and guardians of property, and
+possessed no right to alienate the material welfare of the children. To
+escape replying to such stern questions she preferred to shut her eyes,
+like one who refuses to see the abyss into whose depths he knows he is
+about to fall.
+
+For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed
+the family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
+governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
+the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
+families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
+feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
+made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his stable
+and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his present
+occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of his
+establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes suppressed
+the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her present isolation
+from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so without pretending
+to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So far, facts had
+contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future was more
+becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living called for no
+explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one who lives up to
+his income is considered a madman.
+
+And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and to
+place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the Molinas,
+the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days before the
+one on which this story opens, the money derived from the sale of the
+diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three o'clock in the
+afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to vespers, she met
+Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who turned and accompanied
+her to the church, talking in a low voice of her situation.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said, "unless I fail in the friendship which binds
+me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position,
+nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can
+hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from
+the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he
+has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance
+of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
+thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
+them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
+retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become
+of you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
+dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the
+house, and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, 'The devil!' It
+was the first sign of reason I have known him show for three years."
+
+Madame Claes pressed the notary's arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
+"Keep it secret."
+
+Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
+pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between
+her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her
+mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The
+Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her
+soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was
+accomplished! Between them and their father's honor she must no longer
+hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her husband terrified
+her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of
+his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must
+now depart from the submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The
+interests of her children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished
+tastes, the man she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to
+common matters from the higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from
+a smiling future and plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists
+and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big
+with glory; he could only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty
+hope. Then too, was he not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk
+with such good sense on every subject that he must be sincere when he
+declared he worked for the glory and prosperity of his family. His love
+for his wife and family was not only vast, it was infinite. That feeling
+could not be extinct; it was magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+
+Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into the
+ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show him the
+sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when he was
+listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his love for her
+would lessen! If she had had no children, she would bravely and joyously
+have welcomed the new destiny her husband was making for her. Women who
+are brought up in opulence are quick to feel the emptiness of material
+enjoyments; and when their hearts, more wearied than withered, have once
+learned the happiness of a constant interchange of real feelings, they
+feel no shrinking from reduced outward circumstances, provided they
+are still acceptable to the man who has loved them. Their wishes, their
+pleasures, are subordinated to the caprices of that other life outside
+of their own; to them the only dreadful future is to lose him.
+
+At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her true
+life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And thus,
+when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the deep
+armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her children,
+directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a message to her
+husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished to see him.
+But although the old valet did his best to make his master leave the
+laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus gained time
+for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to the hour nor
+the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs that could not be
+paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that of the present
+and the future. This influx of painful interests, ideas, and feelings
+overcame her, and she wept.
+
+As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
+of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more distracted
+than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she was magnetized
+for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied of all expression,
+by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled from that bald brow.
+Under the shock of this impression she wished to die. But when she heard
+the callous voice, uttering a scientific wish at the moment when her
+heart was breaking, her courage came back to her; she resolved to
+struggle with that awful power which had torn a lover from her arms, a
+father from her children, a fortune from their home, happiness from all.
+And yet she could not repress a trepidation which made her quiver; in
+all her life no such solemn scene as this had taken place. This dreadful
+moment--did it not virtually contain her future, and gather within it
+all the past?
+
+Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies
+the smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily before
+the masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the rush of
+thoughts that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the feelings
+under the weight of which her heart was crushed as her husband slowly
+crossed the room towards the garden-door. Most women know that agony of
+inward deliberation in which Madame Claes was writhing. Even one whose
+heart has been tried by nothing worse than the declaration to a husband
+of some extravagance, or a debt to a dress-maker, will understand how
+its pulses swell and quicken when the matter is one of life itself.
+
+A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her husband's
+feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief; but to Madame
+Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her fears. When she
+saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was to spring towards
+him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should stand before him!
+would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man no longer under the
+glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved to avoid all dangerous
+chances at so solemn a moment, and remained seated, saying in a clear
+voice,
+
+"Balthazar."
+
+He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his
+wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at
+intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium,
+and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never
+forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine,
+unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which
+her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable
+pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside
+herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed
+her wounded feelings,--
+
+"Monsieur, I am speaking to you!"
+
+"What does that mean?" answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and casting
+a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon her like
+a thunderbolt.
+
+"Forgive me, my friend," she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and
+put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back. "I
+am dying!" she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+
+At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid
+reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of this
+attack. Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the door
+upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient wooden
+staircase that his wife's dress having caught on the jaws of one of the
+griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was torn off
+with a loud noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule between their
+chambers, but the door of Josephine's bedroom was locked.
+
+He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, "My God! the key,
+where is the key?"
+
+"Thank you, dear friend," said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. "This
+is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+heart."
+
+"Good God!" cried Claes, "the key!--here come the servants."
+
+Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and
+left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving
+them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+
+"What is it, my dear life?" he said, sitting down beside her, and taking
+her hand and kissing it.
+
+"Nothing--now," she answered. "I suffer no longer. Only, I would I had
+the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet."
+
+"Why gold?" he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+kissed her once more upon the forehead. "Do you not give me the greatest
+of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and precious
+wife?"
+
+"Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I
+see that you are still the same."
+
+"What anguish do you speak of, dear?"
+
+"My friend, we are ruined."
+
+"Ruined!" he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand, holding
+it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long unheard:
+"To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless. Yesterday,
+in searching for a far more important secret, I think I found the means
+of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond. Oh, my dear
+wife! in a few days' time you will forgive me all my forgetfulness--I
+am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to you just now? Be
+indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you, whose toils are
+full of you--of us."
+
+"Enough, enough!" she said, "let us talk of it all to-night, dear
+friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much
+joy."
+
+"To-night," he resumed; "yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave
+my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of
+the heart--Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!"
+
+"You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?"
+
+"Poor child, you cannot understand it."
+
+"You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read
+Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
+Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,--in fact, all the books
+about the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall
+understand you."
+
+"Oh! you are indeed an angel," cried Balthazar, falling at her feet,
+and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. "Yes, we will
+understand each other in all things."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "I would throw myself into those hellish fires which
+heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you
+thus." Then, hearing her daughter's step in the anteroom, she sprang
+quickly forward. "What is it, Marguerite?" she said to her eldest
+daughter.
+
+"My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to dinner
+we need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this morning."
+
+Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them
+to the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+ante-chamber as she said:
+
+"My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your right."
+
+"Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be complete,"
+she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch expression on her
+face. "My friend, go into your own room; do me the kindness to dress for
+dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off this ragged clothing;
+see those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric acid which left these
+yellow edges to the holes? Make yourself young again,--I will send you
+Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my dress."
+
+Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication,
+forgetting that it was locked on his side. He went out through the
+anteroom.
+
+"Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I
+don't want Martha," said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+
+Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a joyous
+action, exclaiming: "Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are in your
+muslin gown and that pink sash!" Then he kissed her forehead and pressed
+her hand.
+
+"Mamma, papa has kissed me!" cried Marguerite, running into her mother's
+room. "He seems so joyous, so happy!"
+
+"My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled for
+the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the object
+of his search. This day is a festival for us all."
+
+"My dear mamma," replied Marguerite, "we shall not be alone in our joy,
+for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself. Oh! put
+on another sash, this is faded."
+
+"So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?"
+
+"In the parlor, playing with Jean."
+
+"Where are Gabriel and Felicie?"
+
+"I hear them in the garden."
+
+"Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your father
+has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy to look
+at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your father in
+dressing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children
+through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw
+that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted
+with gold, commonly called "darning-needles."
+
+"Be good, my darlings," she said, raising the lower sash of the window
+and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door
+of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in
+joyous tones:--
+
+"You won't leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+can."
+
+Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never have
+supposed her lame.
+
+"When monsieur carried madame upstairs," said the old valet, whom she
+met on the staircase, "he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke
+the jaw of that griffin; I'm sure I don't know who can put it on again.
+There's our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!"
+
+"Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don't have it mended at all--it is not
+a misfortune," said his mistress.
+
+"What can have happened?" thought Lemulquinier; "why isn't it a
+misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?"
+
+"Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin," said Madame Claes, opening the parlor
+door.
+
+The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any but
+that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--
+
+"Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
+exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each."
+
+"Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine
+with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible pretext,
+I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself about
+it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In a few
+months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has borrowed."
+
+Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
+at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
+followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--
+
+"I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+moment."
+
+Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon her
+lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the notary,
+with a pretended air of indifference.
+
+Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with vulgar
+good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a
+pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People
+called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests,
+and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce
+from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his
+habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to
+indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed the
+shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively with earthly
+interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy. To marry into
+the family of Claes would have been to him an object of extreme desire,
+if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He could seem generous,
+but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And thus, without explaining
+to himself the motive for his change of manner, his behavior was harsh,
+peremptory, and surly, like that of an ordinary business man, when he
+thought the Claes were ruined; accommodating, affectionate, and almost
+servile, when he saw reason to believe in a happy issue to his cousin's
+labors. Sometimes he beheld an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no
+provincial notary might aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl
+too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial,
+and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and
+kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his
+better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled
+his personal appearance.
+
+Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken to
+her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of the
+change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she guessed
+its meaning and tried to read her daughter's mind by a penetrating
+glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin; but the young
+girl's manner showed complete indifference.
+
+After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current topics
+of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom, where
+his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound of his
+boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and active man,
+and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere expectation
+of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended the stairs.
+Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period. He wore highly
+polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the white silk
+stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with gold buttons,
+a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He had trimmed his
+beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his
+hands, all with such care that he was scarcely recognizable to those
+who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his
+children, his wife, and the notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty
+years old, and whose courteous and affable presence was full of its
+former attractions. The weariness and suffering betrayed by the thin
+face and the clinging of the skin to the bones, had in themselves a sort
+of charm.
+
+"Good-evening, Pierquin," said Monsieur Claes.
+
+Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+wife's lap and tossed him in the air.
+
+"See that little fellow!" he exclaimed to the notary. "Doesn't such a
+pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!" he
+cried, tossing Jean into the air; "down, down! up! down!"
+
+The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the
+ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that she
+might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,--simple
+apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+
+"Let me see how you can walk," said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+
+The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold
+buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his
+boots.
+
+"You are a darling!" cried Balthazar, kissing him; "you are a Claes,
+you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?" he said to his
+eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. "Are you struggling
+valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp
+hold of mathematics?"
+
+Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+that characterized him.
+
+"My dear Pierquin," he said, "perhaps you have something to say to me."
+He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, "Come and see my
+tulips."
+
+Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to
+repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable,
+so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed
+her, exclaiming:--
+
+"My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+to-day."
+
+"It is long since I have seen my father so kind," answered the young
+girl.
+
+Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her his
+arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next
+room, the whole family following.
+
+The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated with
+paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with tall oaken
+side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a curious piece of
+family china. The walls were hung with violet leather, on which designs
+of game and other hunting objects were stamped in gold. Carefully
+arranged here and there above the shelves, shone the brilliant plumage
+of strange birds, and the lustre of rare shells. The chairs, which
+evidently had not been changed since the beginning of the sixteenth
+century, showed the square shape with twisted columns and the low back
+covered with a fringed stuff, common to that period, and glorified by
+Raphael in his picture of the Madonna della Sedia. The wood of these
+chairs was now black, but the gilt nails shone as if new, and the stuff,
+carefully renewed from time to time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+
+The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this
+room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their graceful
+antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of respectability. The
+glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet which may be seen
+in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The dinner-service of
+faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in the manner of Bernard
+Palissy, came from the English manufactory of Wedgwood. The silver-ware
+was massive, with square sides and designs in high relief,--genuine
+family plate, whose pieces, in every variety of form, fashion, and
+chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and the progress towards
+fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were fringed, a fashion
+altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will readily be supposed
+that the Claes's household made it a point of honor to possess the best.
+
+All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for
+the daily use of the family. The front house, where the social
+entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels,
+being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost
+to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in
+the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and
+simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew outside
+the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches twined about
+the casements.
+
+"You are faithful to the old traditions, madame," said Pierquin, as he
+received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread. "This
+is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my uncle
+des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic soup
+of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de Savarus of
+Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom; but everywhere
+else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days everything is changing;
+furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets,
+lances, shields, and bows and arrows! Everybody is rebuilding his house,
+selling his old furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging
+them for Sevres porcelain,--which does not compare with either old
+Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as for me, I'm Flemish to the core;
+my heart actually bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful
+inlaid furniture for the mere value of the wood and the metal. The fact
+is, society wants to change its skin. Everything is being sacrificed,
+even the old methods of art. When people insist on going so fast,
+nothing is conscientiously done. During my last visit to Paris I was
+taken to see the pictures in the Louvre. On my word of honor, they
+are mere screen-painting,--no depth, no atmosphere; the painters were
+actually afraid to put colors on their canvas. And it is they who talk
+of overturning our ancient school of art! Ah, bah!--"
+
+"Our old masters," replied Balthazar, "studied the combination of colors
+and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain.
+You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less
+cultivated in these days than formerly."
+
+Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary's remark
+that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the
+brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she
+had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off the
+thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+
+"Ha! ha!" Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes's mind
+returned to the conversation, "so they are discussing my work in Douai,
+are they?"
+
+"Yes," replied the notary, "every one is asking what it is you spend so
+much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a
+man like you should be searching for the Philosopher's stone. I ventured
+to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was
+attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God's work
+out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man
+to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still, I admit that I
+share the regret people feel at your absence from society. You might as
+well not live here at all. Really, madame, you would have been delighted
+had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you."
+
+"You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+evil is to make me ridiculous," said Balthazar. "Ha! so they think me
+ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in
+honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect
+my dear townsmen bestow on wealth."
+
+Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in
+his tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his
+children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit,
+and pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was
+certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks
+and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart
+which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.
+
+Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about
+the table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of
+his secret hopes. The sudden change in his master's ways was even more
+significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw happiness
+he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments he had come
+to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the drift of his
+master's researches from certain exclamations which escaped the chemist
+when expected results disappointed him, or whether the innate tendency
+of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the ideas of the man in
+whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that Lemulquinier had conceived
+for his master a superstitious feeling that was a mixture of terror,
+admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory was to him what a
+lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope. Every night he went
+to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float in gold"; and every
+morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of the night before.
+
+His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their moral
+qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which
+each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen
+thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt was
+the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from
+a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
+misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of
+a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and
+its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by way of
+euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of character
+or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and long, and
+seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and shining patches
+that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and thin; his whole
+demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes, yellow as the wig
+which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none but oblique glances.
+
+The old valet's outward man was in keeping with the feeling of curiosity
+which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to his master,
+the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about which he
+maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of charm. The
+denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pass with an interest mingled
+with awe; to all their questions he returned sibylline answers big with
+mysterious treasures. Proud of being necessary to his master, he assumed
+an annoying authority over his companions, employing it to further his
+own interests and compel a submission which made him virtually the ruler
+of the house. Contrary to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply
+attached to the families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for
+Balthazar. If any trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event
+happened to the family, he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer
+as phlegmatically as ever.
+
+Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in
+the garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each flower
+being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so
+arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain
+dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named
+"tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of
+each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's father, who had
+frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such
+precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant
+always in the parlor and often spent whole days in contemplating it. The
+stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably green; the proportions
+of the plant were in harmony with the proportions of the flower, whose
+seven colors were distinguishable from each other with the clearly
+defined brilliancy which formerly gave such fabulous value to these
+dazzling plants.
+
+"Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs' worth of
+tulips," said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at the
+many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the beauty
+of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then transforming into
+jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary's words.
+
+"What good do they do you?" continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar;
+"you ought to sell them."
+
+"Bah! am I in want of money?" replied Claes, in the tone of a man to
+whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+
+There was a moment's silence, during which the children made many
+exclamations.
+
+"See this one, mamma!"
+
+"Oh! here's a beauty!"
+
+"Tell me the name of that one!"
+
+"What a gulf for human reason to sound!" cried Balthazar, raising
+his hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. "A compound of
+hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative proportions,
+under the same conditions and by the same principle, these manifold
+colors, each of which constitutes a distinct result."
+
+His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so
+rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as
+if remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a
+mysterious sign, saying,--
+
+"You do not yet understand me, but you will."
+
+Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual
+to him.
+
+"No, I am sure you do not understand him," said Pierquin, taking his
+coffee from Marguerite's hand. "The Ethiopian can't change his skin, nor
+the leopard his spots," he whispered to Madame Claes. "Have the goodness
+to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn't draw him out
+of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any rate."
+
+So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+kissed little Jean in his mother's arms, and retired with a low bow.
+
+When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife round
+the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie was
+causing her by whispering in her ear,--
+
+"I knew how to get rid of him."
+
+Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him
+see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her
+forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+
+"Let us go back into the parlor," she said, after a pause.
+
+Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented games
+for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did not
+notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-past
+nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the parlor after
+helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her mother seated in
+the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife's hand as he talked
+to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire
+without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:--
+
+"Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down, kissed
+her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into your own
+room; but do not sit up too late."
+
+"Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and wife
+remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last
+glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose
+outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.
+When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of
+emotion,--
+
+"Let us go upstairs."
+
+Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's
+chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable. The
+good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of
+virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic
+superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender
+feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and
+sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have
+wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done
+so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect
+of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a pretty
+creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a necessity.
+No one better understood the meaning of the saying, "A pretty woman is
+self-created,"--a maxim which guided every action of Napoleon's first
+wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes was ever natural
+and true.
+
+Though Balthazar knew his wife's chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of
+soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.
+The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of
+the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously
+placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose
+effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music. The
+gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of
+pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly
+distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors
+of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones. The secret
+of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he! Josephine could not tell
+him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of
+her joys and woes.
+
+The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out
+sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The
+silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume
+that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains, carefully
+drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding
+the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered
+husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was
+trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her
+throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely
+glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven's wing, went
+to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no
+sound to penetrate the chamber from without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was
+sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive
+woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful,
+gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman's greatest charm lies
+in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a
+weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments.
+Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the
+rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden
+rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her
+physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself
+gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for
+a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted
+and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray
+background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa.
+This was what she wanted.
+
+"You promised me," she said, taking his hand which she held between her
+own magnetic palms, "to tell me the secret of your researches. Admit,
+dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage
+to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to
+understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me first how
+it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over
+night I had left you happy."
+
+"Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+coquettishly delightful?"
+
+"Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to
+me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to
+keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of
+all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while
+Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone.
+I hate all that comes between us. If you win the glory for which
+you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--I
+alone--should be the giver of your happiness."
+
+"No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that
+first led me into this glorious path."
+
+"A man!" she cried in terror.
+
+"Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in
+1809?"
+
+"Do I remember him!" she exclaimed; "I am often annoyed because my
+memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals
+of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped
+of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!--What awful
+impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been a room in any
+inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here."
+
+"That Polish gentleman," resumed Balthazar, "was named Adam de
+Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give
+up the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I think,
+by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as
+adepts. When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the
+captain gave a start of surprise. 'Have you studied chemistry?' he
+asked. 'With Lavoisier,' I answered. 'You are happy in being rich and
+free,' he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a
+man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the
+brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be
+expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that startled
+me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last gasp he
+had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation for his
+country's fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had always felt
+an irresistible vocation. 'And I see you recognize as I do,' he added,
+'that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder, each yield a
+substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the same qualitative
+result.'
+
+"He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he
+said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general
+meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of
+tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred
+my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the
+anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me
+like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah's tongue; for my
+studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.
+
+"'Monsieur,' he said, 'the parity of these three substances, in
+appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
+nature ought to have a single principle. The researches of modern
+chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural
+effects. Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic
+nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does all
+animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or less
+perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power, which
+gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more important
+part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the products of
+this nature to four simple substances, namely: three gases, nitrogen,
+hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance, non-metallic and
+solid, carbon. Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so simple, devoid of
+movement and sensation, denied the power of growth (too hastily
+accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple substances, or
+elements, whose different combinations make its products. Is it probable
+that means should be more numerous where a lesser number of results are
+produced?
+
+"'My master's opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have
+one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the
+knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought to
+rediscover. Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act again;
+we have chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would apparently
+then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we could decompose
+nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we should have but
+three. This brings us at once close upon the great Ternary of the
+ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom we do wrong to
+scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It is much, and yet
+little,--much, because the science has never recoiled before difficulty;
+little, in comparison with what remains to be done. Chance has served
+her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of crystallized pure
+carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance possible to create?
+The old alchemists, who thought that gold was decomposable and therefore
+creatable, shrank from the idea of producing the diamond. Yet we have
+discovered the nature and the law of its composition.
+
+"'As for me,' he continued, 'I have gone farther still. An experiment
+proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses, which
+lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first place, the
+experiment itself.
+
+"'Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic
+nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
+Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may
+reach the product of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts
+from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by analysis.
+Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a sufficient quantity
+to produce after burning them enough ashes for the experiment. Well,
+by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic acid, aluminium,
+phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, the sulphate and
+carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron, precisely as if the cress
+had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook. Now, those elements did not
+exist in the brimstone, a simple substance which served for soil to the
+cress, nor in the distilled water with which the plant was nourished,
+whose composition was known. But since they are no more to be found
+in the seed itself, we can explain their presence in the plant only by
+assuming the existence of a primary element common to all the substances
+contained in the cress, and also to all those by which we environed
+it. Thus the air, the distilled water, the brimstone, and the various
+elements which analysis finds in the cress, namely, potash, lime,
+magnesia, aluminium, etc., should have one common principle floating in
+the atmosphere like light of the sun.
+
+"'From this unimpeachable experiment,' he cried, 'I deduce the existence
+of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all created
+things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net meaning
+and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to me to
+be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose shrine
+humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter, the
+medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all things
+human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+
+"'It was at this point,' he went on, 'that poverty put an end to my
+researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master of
+your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to the
+conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The PRIME
+MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in carbon.
+The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and positive
+electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will establish
+those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all phenomenal
+existence.
+
+"'Oh, monsieur!' he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that I
+carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck
+of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command without
+knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My
+body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and
+men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and yet despise. My
+soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed, immovable, plunged
+in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the Alkahest,--for that
+principle by which seeds that are absolutely alike, growing in the same
+environments, produce, some a white, others a yellow flower. The same
+phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the same leaves, and apparently
+constituted exactly alike,--one produces yellow silk, another white; and
+if we come to man himself, we find that children often resemble neither
+father nor mother. The logical deduction from this fact surely involves
+the explanation of all the phenomena of nature.
+
+"'Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to believe
+that he created all things by the simplest method? The Pythagorean
+worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and which represented
+Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first aggregation and the
+type of all the rest; that of the number THREE, which throughout
+all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter, Force, and
+Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages, of some
+confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus, Agrippa,
+all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great Triad for
+their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men who despise
+alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that our work is
+only carrying onward the passionate researches of those great men. Had
+I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to have grappled with
+Motion. Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and leading men uselessly to
+their death, my former master is piling discovery upon discovery! he
+is soaring towards the Absolute, while I--I shall die like a dog in the
+trenches!'
+
+"When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a
+touching tone of brotherhood, 'If I see cause for a great experiment
+I will bequeath it to you before I die.'--My Pepita," cried Balthazar,
+taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
+cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
+timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--"
+
+"Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
+husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
+deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the happiness
+of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of the cross?
+did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that flaming eye
+which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the devil could
+have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither husband, nor
+father, nor master of your family."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
+piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising above
+the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine purple
+of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the treasures of your
+heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know what I have done. In
+these three years I have made giant strides--"
+
+His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
+she wept as she listened to him.
+
+"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
+substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
+Why!" he continued, noticing that his wife wept, "I have even decomposed
+tears. Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium,
+mucin, and water."
+
+He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that contracted
+Josephine's features; he was again astride of Science, which bore him
+with outspread wings far away from material existence.
+
+"This analysis, my dear," he went on, "is one of the most convincing
+proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its
+hearth is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction
+of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case
+combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner, again,
+vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations producing
+dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess certain
+vegetables which existed before the period of the last cataclysm. But
+each time that nature has perfected an organism and then, for some
+unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation, instinct, or
+intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system), these three
+agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in direct proportion
+to the result obtained. Man, who represents the highest point of
+intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by which we arrive at
+a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is, among all zoological
+creations, the one in which combustion is found in its most intense
+degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen to some extent in the
+phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a man's body reveals to
+our analysis. May not these substances be traces left within him of
+the passage of the electric fluid which is the principle of all
+fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself by a greater
+variety of compounds in him than in any other animal? Should not he have
+faculties above those of all other created beings for the purpose of
+absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute principle? and may he not
+assimilate that principle so as to produce, in some more perfect
+mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a retort. In my
+judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other
+product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an
+ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated
+to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the
+dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the force resulting
+from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--"
+
+"Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
+love--"
+
+"An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!"
+
+As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
+face rose by degrees to inspiration. "I shall make metals," he cried; "I
+shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!"
+
+"Will you be the happier?" she asked in despair. "Accursed science!
+accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
+sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God."
+
+"Oh! oh! God!"
+
+"He denies Him!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes, God wields a
+power that you can never gain."
+
+At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
+looked at his wife and trembled.
+
+"What power?" he asked.
+
+"Primal force--motion," she replied. "This is what I learn from the
+books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
+like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to
+them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them,
+can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga
+wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the
+atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating."
+
+"If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create."
+
+"Will nothing stop him?" cried Pepita. "Oh! my love, my love! it is
+killed! I have lost him!"
+
+She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the sanctity
+of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than
+ever through her tears.
+
+"Yes," she resumed in a broken voice, "you are dead to all. I see it
+but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
+it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
+companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would
+fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you
+to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within
+your breast the irresistible power that has mastered you--But no; God is
+good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores
+you, of the children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone
+who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds
+of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you,--nothing
+guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it
+otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred
+thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth!
+I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all
+I possess and say, 'Take it, fling it into your furnace, turn it into
+smoke'; and I should laugh to see it float away in vapor. Were you poor,
+I would beg without shame for the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could
+my body yield your hateful Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those
+fires with joy, since your glory, your delight is in that unfound
+secret. But our children, Claes, our children! what will become of them
+if you do not soon discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin
+came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and
+cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I might spare you
+the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
+silver."
+
+She saw her husband's eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
+despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+
+"My friend," she cried, "refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you,
+do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them,
+Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a
+wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them. Motherhood has
+sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes
+wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your
+life! And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the cause of my
+children before you, and not my own?"
+
+Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth
+her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over her
+rival. Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her
+feet.
+
+"Have I caused you such grief?" he said, in the tone of a man waking
+from a painful dream.
+
+"My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,"
+she said, passing her hand over his hair. "Sit here beside me," she
+continued, pointing to the sofa. "Ah! I can forget it all now, now that
+you come back to us; all can be repaired--but you will not abandon
+me again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant me a woman's
+influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the
+happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men. You
+may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a
+little for your good. I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.
+Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love Chemistry better than you love
+us. Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart;
+but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half. Tell me, is not my
+disinterestedness sublime?"
+
+She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
+women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
+contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
+habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth
+of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power she
+thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
+
+"Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may wish
+us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your ethereal
+disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of looking
+into futurity."
+
+"Yes," he exclaimed, "by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
+on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
+class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The prophet
+sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare and too
+obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation."
+
+"Is this," she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she
+had so unfortunately reawakened, "what you call an affinity?"
+
+"No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are neutral,
+they produce no reaction--"
+
+"Oh! hush, hush," she cried, "you will make me die of grief. I can never
+bear to see my rival in the transports of your love."
+
+"But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of my
+family. You are the basis of all my hopes."
+
+"Ah, look me in the eyes!"
+
+The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole
+person Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and
+muslin.
+
+"Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science," he said. "If I fall
+back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must drag me
+from them; I desire it."
+
+She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,--a
+hand that was both strong and delicate.
+
+"But I ask more," she said.
+
+"You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all," he answered.
+
+"I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science," she said,
+with fire in her eyes.
+
+"So be it--let Chemistry go to the devil!"
+
+"This moment effaces all!" she cried. "Make me suffer now, if you will."
+
+Tears came to Balthazar's eyes, as he heard these words.
+
+"You were right, love," he said. "I have seen you through a veil; I have
+not understood you."
+
+"If it concerned only me," she said, "willingly would I have suffered
+in silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign. But
+your sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate your
+property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the world
+will take little account of it, it will only blame you and yours. But
+surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that his wife has
+shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of this no more,"
+she cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. "To-night, my Claes,
+let us not be less than happy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
+Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
+to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did not
+enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
+move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months, only
+returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes determined
+to give, as in former years, to commemorate his wedding-day. He now
+began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder which his experiments
+and his indifference had brought into his business affairs.
+
+Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named Martha,
+who had never left her mistress since the latter left her convent. It
+was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole society of Douai
+with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all difficulties by
+proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the gardener's son as
+a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin's manservant. Thus the pinched
+circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the community.
+
+During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+cleverly able to outwit her husband's listlessness. She commissioned him
+to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand staircase,
+the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque to order one
+of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the burgher tables in the
+northern departments. A fete like that the Claes were about to give is a
+serious affair, involving thought and care and active correspondence, in
+a land where traditions of hospitality put the family honor so much
+at stake that to servants as well as masters a grand dinner is like a
+victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived from Ostend, grouse were
+imported from Scotland, fruits came from Paris; in short, not the
+smallest accessory was lacking to the hereditary luxury.
+
+A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
+government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary fete
+of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion to the
+neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to make it
+a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the fete was
+talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the toilettes,
+the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited, and the
+events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These preparations
+now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of the Alkahest.
+Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the servant of
+science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the
+master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of
+surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special character
+to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all
+other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
+fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
+and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+
+The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
+luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the
+Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the
+grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made
+known on the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound
+grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved
+by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
+
+Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
+from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote,
+from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his
+promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the
+subject of the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their
+meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did
+honor to his patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this
+festal day brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the
+House of Claes shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite
+of its magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands
+of six generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last
+time.
+
+Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
+the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially
+by the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of
+her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters
+of that country loved to represent,--the head perfectly rounded and
+full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow,
+gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness
+which did not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the
+high square brow an expression of firmness, hidden at present under an
+apparent calmness and docility. Without being sad or melancholy, she
+seemed to have little natural enjoyment. Reflectiveness, order, a
+sense of duty, the three chief expressions of Flemish nature, were the
+characteristics of a face that seemed cold at first sight, but to which
+the eye was recalled by a certain grace of outline and a placid pride
+which seemed the pledges of domestic happiness. By one of those freaks
+which physiologists have not yet explained, she bore no likeness to
+either father or mother, but was the living image of her maternal
+great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges, whose portrait, religiously
+preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
+
+The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters forbade
+the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the
+pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however, retired early; only
+the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the
+intimate friends of the family. Little by little the brilliantly lighted
+house, to which all the notabilities of Douai had flocked, sank into
+silence, and by one o'clock in the morning the great gallery was
+deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon after another,
+and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant, grew dark and
+gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before the family. When
+the Claes returned to their own appartement, Balthazar gave his wife the
+letter he had received from the Polish officer: Josephine returned it
+with a mournful gesture; she foresaw the coming doom.
+
+From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the weariness
+and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after the family
+breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little Jean, and
+talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or embroidery
+or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the talk, and
+seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his wife came
+down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in an easy-chair
+looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite undisturbed by the
+rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was brought in, he read it
+slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to kill the time. Then he
+would get up, look at the sky through the window panes, go back to his
+chair and mend the fire drearily, as though he were deprived of all
+consciousness of his own movements by the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
+was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
+length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who
+have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects
+of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of material
+existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of expansion which
+need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of material life
+cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the
+mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving natures. Consequently,
+two isolated beings who know each other thoroughly ought to seek their
+enjoyments in the higher regions of thought; for it is impossible to
+satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them.
+Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects,
+he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart
+a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great
+geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a
+rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know
+all, and comprehend all.
+
+During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
+been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
+ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of
+his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources
+were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine's
+relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis
+XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or
+the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the sham embassies
+from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues
+of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the
+expedients of a family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst
+of his grandeur he felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had
+rocked the cradles of his children was often at her wit's end to rock
+his, or soothe the monarch now suffering from his misuse of men and
+things, of life and God. Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much
+power. Stifling in the clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the
+pomps of Science, of treasures for the human race, of glory for himself.
+He suffered as artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered
+beneath the pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two
+sovereigns; though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward
+force, the other by his weakness.
+
+What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
+she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week. Cafes
+at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which, during
+a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and liqueurs
+which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the Flemish
+dainties and took their "cafe noir" or their "cafe au lait frappe,"
+while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's toilettes, and
+related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture by Mieris or
+Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet plumes, or the
+beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet, Balthazar's
+efforts to play the part of host, his constrained courtesy, his forced
+animation, left him the next day in a state of languor which showed but
+too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
+
+These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
+it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice, they
+retarded Claes's fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though he
+never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least regret for
+the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have
+the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick
+person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner
+with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the
+fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When
+night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from
+the importunities of thought: the next day he rose wearily to encounter
+another day,--seeming to measure time as the tired traveller measures
+the desert he is forced to cross.
+
+If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to see
+the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings of the
+mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the heart. She
+dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to the laughter
+of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air of a man
+absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw him shake
+off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem cheerful, that
+he might not distress others. The little coquetries of the father with
+his daughters, or his games with little Jean, moistened the eyes of
+the poor wife, who often left the room to hide the feelings that heroic
+effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of which is well understood by
+women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks their heart. At such times
+Madame Claes longed to say, "Kill me, and do what you will!"
+
+Little by little Balthazar's eyes lost their fire and took the glaucous
+opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His attentions to his
+wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing, grew heavy and inert.
+These symptoms became more marked towards the end of April, terrifying
+Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now intolerable, and who had all
+along reproached herself a thousand times while she admired the Flemish
+loyalty which kept her husband faithful to his promise.
+
+At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring him
+back to life.
+
+"Dear friend," she said, "I release you from your promise."
+
+Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You are thinking of your researches, are you not?" she continued.
+
+He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from remonstrating,
+Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss into which they
+were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed it, smiling.
+
+"Thank you," she said; "now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
+me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
+jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
+and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
+diamonds."
+
+The joy that suddenly lighted her husband's face was like a death-knell
+to the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man's passion was stronger
+than himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him to walk
+without faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge of a
+precipice. For him faith, for her doubt,--for her the heavier burden:
+does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to
+believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her connivance
+in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
+
+"The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
+Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
+the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
+and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
+whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the
+contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to
+give vent to the joy that choked him.
+
+From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
+The future of her children, their father's credit, were two motives as
+powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+unhappy woman never knew another hour's peace of mind. The demon of
+Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
+agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
+and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed
+by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those
+of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit
+and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for
+compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the
+Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with
+terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an
+expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and
+feelings raged in her heart and mind. She beheld her children's future
+fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not saving their father's life? was
+it not her first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her
+for a moment.
+
+She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
+even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
+were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
+seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
+through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
+building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
+her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
+breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar's
+experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming
+success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she
+looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
+Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
+the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the other.
+
+Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought, the
+poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and despair
+which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the anxieties of
+the mother trembling for her children. She now practised the doleful
+silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing the gloom that
+pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that melancholy parlor
+without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad maternal foresight,
+she trained her daughters to household work, and tried to make them
+skilful in womanly employments, that they might have the means of
+living if destitution came. The outward calm of this quiet home covered
+terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer Balthazar had used
+the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty thousand francs in
+debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
+
+In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without result
+as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when he ended
+the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his impotence crushed
+him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted enormous sums of money
+drove him to despair. It was a frightful catastrophe. He left the
+garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and threw himself into a chair
+in the midst of his children, remaining motionless for some minutes as
+though dead, making no answer to the questions his wife pressed upon
+him. Tears came at last to his relief, and he rushed to his own chamber
+that no one might witness his despair.
+
+Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone with
+her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man, these
+broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the husband
+and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past sufferings. The
+victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said to her in a tone of
+dreadful conviction: "I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of
+my children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill
+myself,"--the words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband's
+nature enough to fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an
+inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized
+her, and was all the more dangerous because she controlled its violent
+effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
+
+"My friend," she said, "I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
+does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin,
+but an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de
+Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from
+ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is
+enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all
+that you owe to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an
+account against you."
+
+Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
+now white.
+
+"Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
+they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus,
+to display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families:
+he thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
+recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
+amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
+continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with very
+little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in course of
+time and by economy; meantime you will be happy."
+
+Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector
+of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
+Pepita's, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
+convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
+with a nervous shudder.
+
+"I dared not tell you," he said, "that between me and the Unconditioned,
+the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
+only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
+centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,--in short, in a
+vacuum."
+
+Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
+passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem in
+chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to the
+parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened daughters,
+and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her hands, kneeling
+one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her grief, and asking
+at intervals, "Mother, what is it?"
+
+"My poor children, I am dying; I feel it."
+
+The answer struck home to Marguerite's heart; she saw, for the first
+time on her mother's face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which only
+comes on olive-tinted skins.
+
+"Martha, Martha!" cried Felicie, "come quickly; mamma wants you."
+
+The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the livid
+hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in Spanish,--
+
+"Body of Christ! madame is dying!"
+
+Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+
+"Don't alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha," said her
+mistress. "My poor dear girls," she added, pressing Marguerite and
+Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; "I wish I could live
+long enough to see you married and happy. Martha," she continued, "tell
+Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name to come
+here."
+
+The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha,
+both devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their
+own affections. Martha's dreadful announcement,--"Madame is dying;
+monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,"--forced
+certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier.
+He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
+one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
+boudoir of a fine lady.
+
+"I knew how it would end," said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+"There's no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
+himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat."
+
+Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
+which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
+Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
+made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a motion
+worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large mouth with
+bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+
+"Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money," he
+said; "and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold. There's
+not the thickness of a farthing between us and--"
+
+"Well, you've got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don't you give 'em
+to monsieur? he's your master, and if you are so sure of his doings--"
+
+"You don't know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
+and heat the water," remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+
+"I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
+and if you are allowed to have your way, you'll make ducks and drakes of
+everything till there's nothing left."
+
+"And monsieur," added Martha, entering the kitchen, "will kill madame,
+just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won't let him swallow
+up everything he's got. He's possessed by the devil; anybody can see
+that. You don't risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
+haven't got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when
+we are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
+Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l'Abbe de Solis."
+
+"I've got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the laboratory
+in order," said the valet. "Besides, it's too far--go yourself."
+
+"Just hear the brute!" cried Martha. "Pray who is to give madame her
+foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+head."
+
+"Mulquinier," said Marguerite, coming into the servants' hall, which
+adjoined the kitchen, "on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call at
+Dr. Pierquin's house and ask him to come here at once."
+
+"Ha! you've got to go now," said Josette.
+
+"Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order,"
+said Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
+despotic air.
+
+"Father," said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
+descending the stairs, "can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
+town?"
+
+"Now you're forced to go, you old barbarian!" cried Martha, as she heard
+Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter's bidding.
+
+The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the family
+whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two women and
+Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of increasing the
+loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+
+This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the future
+of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor in
+misfortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine's
+condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He saw
+them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor,
+too weak to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed
+abstractedly at his daughters now attending on their mother, without
+inquiring the cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or
+Jean attempted to speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to
+Balthazar. Such a scene was of a nature to make a young girl think; and
+Marguerite, placed as she was between her father and mother, was old
+enough and sensible enough to weigh their conduct.
+
+There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame
+Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar
+impelled her to justify in Marguerite's eyes conduct that might, to the
+upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The very
+respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making
+herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his
+meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal
+majesty. Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only
+increased Marguerite's admiration for her mother, to whom she was more
+particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives. This
+feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose causes
+naturally occupied the young girl's mind. No human power could have
+hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by Josette, from
+enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of her home
+during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes's reserve,
+Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the domestic
+drama. She was soon to be her mother's active confidante, and later,
+under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+
+Madame Claes's watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter,
+to whom she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards
+Balthazar. The firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in
+the young girl made her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle
+between father and daughter whenever her own death should make the
+latter mistress of the household. The poor woman had reached a point
+where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death
+itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the
+resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from
+encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future
+disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She
+hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she
+studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite,
+trusting that his daughter might continue to be to him an angel of
+love, while exercising over the family a protecting and conservative
+authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love upon her dear
+ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not willing to lower
+the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her into the secret
+dangers of his scientific passion before it became necessary to do so.
+She studied Marguerite's soul and character, seeking to discover if the
+girl's own nature would lead her to be a mother to her brothers and her
+sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+
+Madame Claes's last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly
+to the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the
+care of property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of the
+Absolute.
+
+The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+monotonous beating of Balthazar's foot, which he continued to trot,
+wholly unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was
+sitting beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid,
+convulsed face, turned now and again to her father, wondering at his
+indifference. Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw the
+Abbe de Solis leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing the
+court-yard.
+
+"Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel," said Felicie.
+
+"That good young man!" exclaimed Madame Claes; "I am glad to welcome
+him."
+
+Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother's lips. For
+the last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred mysterious
+feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts that had lain
+dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to Madame Claes on
+the occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of
+those imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life;
+and their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief
+sketch of the two personages now first introduced into the history of
+this family.
+
+It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
+of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
+family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
+elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at
+the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+
+The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
+face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes.
+He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a
+painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and
+obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand.
+His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate,
+suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious
+purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning,
+his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been
+successively a Dominican friar, the "grand penitencier" of Toledo,
+and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French
+Revolution had not intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family
+would have made him one of the highest dignitaries of the Church;
+but the grief he felt for the death of the young duke, Madame Claes's
+brother, who had been his pupil, turned him from active life, and he now
+devoted himself to the education of his nephew, who was made an orphan
+at an early age.
+
+After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
+near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
+Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led
+him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
+Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
+made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
+those ideas, he remained there,--all the more willingly because he
+was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
+continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
+censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame Guyon. His morals were
+rigid, his life exemplary, and he was believed to have visions. In spite
+of his own detachment from the things of life, his affection for his
+nephew made him careful of the young man's interests. When a work of
+charity was to be done, the old abbe put the faithful of his flock
+under contribution before having recourse to his own means; and his
+patriarchal authority was so well established, his motives so pure, his
+discernment so rarely at fault, that every one was ready to answer
+his appeal. To give an idea of the contrast between the uncle and the
+nephew, we may compare the old man to a willow on the borders of a
+stream, hollowed to a skeleton and barely alive, and the young man to a
+sweet-brier clustering with roses, whose erect and graceful stems spring
+up about the hoary trunk of the old tree as if they would support it.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at his
+side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate sensibility,
+of half-dreamy innocence,--those fleeting flowers of youth which bloom
+perennially in souls that are nourished on religious principles. The old
+priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his pupil, preparing him for
+the trials of life by constant study and a discipline that was almost
+cloisteral. Such an education, which would launch the youth unstained
+upon the world and render him happy, provided he were fortunate in his
+earliest affections, had endowed him with a purity of spirit which gave
+to his person something of the charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest
+eyes, veiling a strong and courageous soul, sent forth a light that
+vibrated in the soul as the tones of a crystal bell sound their
+undulations on the ear. His face, though regular, was expressive, and
+charmed the eye with its clear-cut outline, the harmony of its
+lines, and the perfect repose which came of a heart at peace. All was
+harmonious. His black hair, his brown eyes and eyebrows, heightened
+the effect of a white skin and a brilliant color. His voice was such as
+might have been expected from his beautiful face; and something feminine
+in his movements accorded well with the melody of its tones and with
+the tender brightness of his eyes. He seemed unaware of the charm he
+exercised by his modest silence, the half-melancholy reserve of his
+manner, and the respectful attentions he paid to his uncle.
+
+Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the
+old abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking
+for obstructions that might trip his uncle's feet and guiding him to
+a smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There
+was something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in
+the obedience that never cavilled at the old man's orders; it seemed as
+though there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had given
+him. When the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in their own
+home or in the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes lift his
+head with so much dignity, as if to assert his metal should any other
+man assail him, that men of honor were moved at the sight like artists
+before a glorious picture; for noble sentiments ring as loudly in the
+soul from living incarnations as from the imagery of art.
+
+Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de
+Solis was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a
+man, invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity.
+Entering hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times
+to hide their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in
+black and looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face
+of a young man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their
+mutual astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each
+other in their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again
+with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal. Marguerite
+took her mother's arm, and spoke to her to cover her confusion and
+find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck with a swan-like
+motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported his uncle on his
+arm. The light was cleverly arranged to give due value to the pictures,
+and the half-obscurity of the gallery encouraged those furtive glances
+which are the joy of timid natures. Neither went so far, even in
+thought, as the first note of love; yet both felt the mysterious trouble
+which stirs the heart, and is jealously kept secret in our youth from
+fastidiousness or modesty.
+
+The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed
+to overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon a
+child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they have
+thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or love,
+listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure
+flames already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an
+irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first
+perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the
+musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much more
+shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life? The first
+heart in which we draw the breath of love,--is it not our home, our
+native land? Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that Voice of
+music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty veil, and
+reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+
+When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an
+angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon
+Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute thought
+on the canvas with the living thought beside him. This involuntary and
+delightful homage was understood and treasured. The old abbe gravely
+praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him, but the youth and
+the maiden were silent.
+
+Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture
+gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders,
+all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this
+vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite's
+mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray
+when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame Claes. That voice,
+whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights into her heart,
+completed the revelation that had come to her,--a revelation which
+Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own profit; for it often
+happens that the man whom destiny employs to waken love in the heart
+of a young girl is ignorant of his work and leaves it unfinished.
+Marguerite bowed confusedly; her true farewell was in the glance which
+seemed unwilling to lose so pure and lovely a vision. Like a child
+she wanted her melody. Their parting took place at the foot of the old
+staircase near the parlor; and when Marguerite re-entered the room she
+watched the uncle and the nephew till the street-door closed upon them.
+
+Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which caused
+her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion observe
+her daughter's manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to the house
+on the occasion of her illness, she was too violently agitated to notice
+the color that rushed into Marguerite's face and betrayed the tumult of
+a virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By the time the old abbe was
+announced, Marguerite had taken up her sewing and appeared to give it
+such attention that she bowed to the uncle and nephew without looking at
+them. Monsieur Claes mechanically returned their salutation and left
+the room with the air of a man called away by his occupations. The good
+Dominican sat down beside Madame Claes and looked at her with one of
+those searching glances by which he penetrated the minds of others; the
+sight of Monsieur Claes and his wife was enough to make him aware of a
+catastrophe.
+
+"My children," said the mother, "go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+Emmanuel your father's tulips."
+
+Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie's arm and looked at the young
+man, who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion. When
+all four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other side,
+leaving Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young de
+Solis, led him to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the same
+manner year after year by Lemulquinier.
+
+"Do you love tulips?" asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+deep silence,--a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+
+"Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their beauties.
+They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber in which I
+live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that are softer
+to the eye."
+
+Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it
+was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness,
+the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+
+"Do you work very hard?" she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with
+a back, painted green. "Here," she continued, "the tulips are not so
+close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors
+are dazzling; they give pain."
+
+"Do I work hard?" replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+smoothed the gravel with his foot. "Yes; I work at many things. My uncle
+wished to make me a priest."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+
+"I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage
+to oppose my uncle's wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a
+poor orphan!"
+
+"What do you mean to be?" asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+gesture, "I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender
+admiration, "except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am
+studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I
+were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to
+live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love.
+That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer a
+daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold
+and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is
+emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher
+like me."
+
+"I have always called the daisies marguerites," she said.
+
+Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.
+Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he
+feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said
+at last, "I dared not pronounce your name"--then he paused.
+
+"A teacher?" she said.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+taste for historical researches."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+That "ah!" so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a
+foolish laugh and said:--
+
+"You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you."
+
+"My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I
+think," said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+
+"Your mother seems to me greatly changed," said Emmanuel.
+
+"She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings; and
+we can only try to share them with her."
+
+Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown
+to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the
+price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in
+Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when
+poverty should overtake her children. With much deliberation, and after
+weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one
+of prudence. He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which
+he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the
+estimation of others.
+
+The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with letters
+of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do a service
+to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures in the
+gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the ostensible sum of
+eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen thousand more which were
+paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The pictures were so well known that
+nothing was needed to complete the sale but an answer from Balthazar to
+the letter which Messieurs Happe and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel
+de Solis was commissioned by Claes to receive the price of the pictures,
+which were thereupon packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale
+from the people of Douai.
+
+Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he
+had borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his
+chemical researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its noblest
+ornament. Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret; he felt
+so sure of repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he reserved
+the right of redemption. In Josephine's eyes a hundred pictures were
+as nothing compared to domestic happiness and the satisfaction of her
+husband's mind; moreover, she refilled the gallery with other paintings
+taken from the reception-rooms, and to conceal the gaps which these left
+in the front house, she changed the arrangement of the furniture.
+
+When Balthazar's debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and his
+nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats reserved by
+Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the Dutch ducats, to
+which the events of the Continental war had given a commercial value.
+One hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were buried in the cellar of
+the house in which the abbe and his nephew resided.
+
+Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock
+he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of languor
+and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so completely
+absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had overtaken
+France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons,
+drew him from his laboratory; he was neither husband, father, nor
+citizen,--solely chemist.
+
+Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she
+was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own
+chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished
+joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed her,
+she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by declaring
+the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better suited to her
+condition. The bed in which the unfortunate woman ended her life was
+placed between the fireplace and a window looking on the garden. There
+she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training the souls of
+her young daughters, striving to leave within them the fire of her own.
+Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations, allowed maternal love
+to have its way. The mother now seemed the more delightful because her
+motherhood had blossomed late. Like all generous persons, she passed
+through sensitive phases of feeling that she mistook for remorse.
+Believing that she had defrauded her children of the tenderness that
+should have been theirs, she sought to redeem those imaginary wrongs;
+bestowing attentions and tender cares which made her precious to them;
+she longed to make her children live, as it were, within her heart; to
+shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to cherish them enough in the few
+remaining days to redeem the time during which she had neglected them.
+The sufferings of her mind gave to her words and her caresses a glowing
+warmth that issued from her soul. Her eyes caressed her children, her
+voice with its yearning intonations touched their hearts, her hand
+showered blessings on their heads.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
+received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
+the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes's state of health seemed a
+sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband's debts
+put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes
+to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
+occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
+completely out of people's minds. During those two years Douai was so
+often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either
+by the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of
+the country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were
+in peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
+himself.
+
+The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
+the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
+rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
+hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength
+to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the
+same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon
+the room. The monotony of this existence was broken only on the days
+when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame
+Claes.
+
+While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
+Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
+not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
+spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
+words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them
+so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual
+understanding surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she
+was, back to the young and happy past which gave such bitterness to
+the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling
+repressed the sweet half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the
+saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively divined.
+
+No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
+nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
+which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
+and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development.
+There are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of
+Madame Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life
+has smiled; these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time
+of joy, seasons that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are
+other loves, framed in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures
+are painful, costly, burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or
+blackened by despair. The love in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel,
+as yet unknown to them for love, the sentiment that budded into life
+beneath the gloomy arches of the picture-gallery, beside the stern old
+abbe, in a still and silent moment, that love so grave and so discreet,
+yet rich in tender depths, in secret delights that were luscious to the
+taste as stolen grapes snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in
+coming years the sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its
+birth.
+
+Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
+they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
+deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
+shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
+becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium
+of communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
+supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
+hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
+distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother's
+sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of unuttered
+promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of Raphael
+painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither avowed;
+they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not know what
+wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their heads. They
+doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow them, they
+stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to say to
+each other, "Shall we end our days together?"
+
+The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
+comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
+through Balthazar. However painful her husband's presence might be to
+her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
+he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
+moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying woman
+would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and her
+daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they forgave
+him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some sudden
+illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
+only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
+Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
+their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of the
+being he had once so passionately loved.
+
+When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
+Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
+strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
+brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
+came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her
+cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, "My dear wife, how are
+you to-day?" she answered, "Better, dear friend," and made him think she
+would be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great
+that he accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife
+was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his
+alone she was living.
+
+A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
+shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
+presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to
+visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two
+beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare
+intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve
+which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a time when
+even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon
+to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of separation, which
+might have killed her had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became
+so great that there were times when she was joyful in the thought that
+he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar
+in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his own way, she lived
+in the happiness she had procured for him,--a shadowy joy, and yet it
+satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced
+herself to believe it; and she glided over that icy surface, not daring
+to rest her weight upon it lest it should break and drown her soul in a
+gulf of awful nothingness.
+
+No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
+consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
+condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks
+of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
+February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the
+words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+
+"Madame," said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+hear the conversation, "Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
+protect the future of your children."
+
+Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
+she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
+which affected him.
+
+His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
+herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
+wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
+pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
+courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
+remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
+and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+
+Marguerite's management of the household since her mother's illness had
+amply fulfilled the dying woman's hopes that Madame Claes was able to
+look upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident
+that she herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both
+women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made
+between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the
+daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes
+rested from her writing, Marguerite said: "Mother?" then she dropped as
+if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask
+the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal
+the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she
+might not see the superscription.
+
+"You can read it, my child," said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
+
+The young girl read the words, "To my daughter Marguerite."
+
+"We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile," said Madame
+Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+
+Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
+hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling
+by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been
+brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months
+was professor of history and philosophy.
+
+"Dear children, we must part!" she cried. "You have never forsaken me,
+never! and he who--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Monsieur Emmanuel," said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother's
+face, "go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse."
+
+Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
+urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, "I will come."
+
+"Emmanuel," said Madame Claes when he returned to her, "take my
+sons away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
+sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand."
+
+When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
+understood her and sent Felicie away.
+
+"I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma," said Marguerite
+who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased
+the wound Pierquin had given. "I have had no money for the household
+expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months' wages to the
+servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
+dare to do so. You don't know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
+gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?"
+
+"He never told me!" exclaimed Madame Claes. "My God! thou callest me to
+thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?"
+
+She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
+eyes.
+
+"Marguerite," she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, "here is
+a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death,
+when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are
+without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but
+take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few
+hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be economical.
+Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,--and it
+may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret
+whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will
+no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it of you,--should that time
+come, treat him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile
+the interests of which you will be the sole protector with the duty
+which you owe to a father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness
+and his life to the glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act,
+his intentions are noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him
+once more kind and affectionate--YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say
+these words to you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften
+the anguish of my death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside
+your father; to cause him no grief; never to reproach him; never to
+condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate guardian of the home until--his
+work accomplished--he is again the master of his family."
+
+"I understand you, dear mother," said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+eyelids of the dying woman. "I will do as you wish."
+
+"Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
+management of the property and the household. If you married, your
+husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
+family and disturb your father's life."
+
+Marguerite looked at her mother and said, "Have you nothing else to say
+to me about my marriage?"
+
+"Can you hesitate, my child?" cried the dying woman in alarm.
+
+"No," the daughter answered; "I promise to obey you."
+
+"Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you," said the mother,
+shedding hot tears. "Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
+Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
+guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
+sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
+him--too much."
+
+She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
+gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
+violent.
+
+A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
+and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
+ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
+looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
+
+"Where is my husband?"
+
+Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
+uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
+spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
+through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
+
+"Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
+last sacraments," she cried with the violence of indignation.
+
+"I am coming," answered Balthazar.
+
+Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
+him. Madame Claes's eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband
+did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered,
+Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?" she said to him with an angelic
+tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+
+"I have done it!" he cried joyfully; "Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
+principle of--"
+
+A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
+
+"What did they tell me?" he demanded. "Are you worse? What is the
+matter?"
+
+"This is the matter, monsieur," whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
+at his conduct; "your wife is dying, and you have killed her."
+
+Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
+went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
+Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
+tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+"You are dying, and I have killed you!" he said. "What does he mean?"
+
+"My husband," she answered, "I only lived in your love, and you have
+taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did."
+
+"Leave us," said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
+"Have I for one moment ceased to love you?" he went on, sitting down
+beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+
+"My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I have
+not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
+full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are
+not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
+functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to
+all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married
+days; such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen
+into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence unlimited, the tender
+habits of affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in
+time: we live together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions
+from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word,
+one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet, you have sold your last
+pictures, you have sold even the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing
+money on your property, and have said no word to me. Ah! I go from
+life weary of life. If you are doing wrong, if you delude yourself in
+following the unattainable, have I not shown you that my love could
+share your faults, could walk beside you and be happy, though you led me
+in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,--that was my glory; it is
+now my death. Balthazar, my illness has lasted long; it began on the
+day when here, in this place where I am about to die, you showed me that
+Science was more to you than Family. And now the end has come; your wife
+is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune and wife were yours,--you could
+do what you willed with your own; but on the day of my death my property
+goes to my children, and you cannot touch it; what will then become of
+you? I am telling you the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far;
+when I am gone will anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now
+your life? If you have sacrificed your wife, your children will count
+but little in the scale; for I must be just and own you loved me
+above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have cast into the
+gulf,--and what have you found?"
+
+At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
+face.
+
+"Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children," continued the
+dying woman. "You are called in derision 'Claes the alchemist'; soon
+it will be 'Claes the madman.' For myself, I believe in you. I know
+you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is
+mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy
+with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be ruined.
+I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me consolation for
+my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let
+me be certain that my children will not want for bread--Ah, nothing,
+nothing, not even you, can calm my fears."
+
+"I swear," said Claes, "to--"
+
+"No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath," she said,
+interrupting him. "You owed us your protection; we have been without it
+seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither wife
+nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His virtues
+are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot
+belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about
+him, like a majestic tree--and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the
+height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for this last day
+to tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings
+of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo
+in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead,
+dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her
+joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But
+those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my
+anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!"
+
+"Lemulquinier!" cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+
+The old man appeared.
+
+"Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be careful,
+but destroy all. I renounce Science," he said to his wife.
+
+"Too late," she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. "Marguerite!" she
+cried, feeling herself about to die.
+
+Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
+saw her mother's eyes now glazing.
+
+"MARGUERITE!" repeated the dying woman.
+
+The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
+bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
+forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.
+
+Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
+foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
+virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
+Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter
+judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his
+daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love with
+which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to
+her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must ever
+hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his attendant
+genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion, denying him the
+strength to carry his repentance into action: he feared himself.
+
+When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
+minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
+The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
+woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to
+enter it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
+hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
+the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of soul by
+ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers, anathematizes those
+who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion (the hypocrite!) in
+weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+
+The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a
+few flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist,
+doing homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and
+spades. Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,--the fi, fo, fum of
+collective grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with
+neither more nor less of feeling, at all hours and in every town in
+France,--they proceeded to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin
+was the first to observe that the death of this excellent woman was
+a mercy, for her husband had made her unhappy; and it was even more
+fortunate for her children: she was unable while living to refuse her
+money to the husband she adored; but now that she was dead, Claes was
+debarred from touching it. Thereupon all present calculated the fortune
+of that poor Madame Claes, wondered how much she had laid by (had she,
+in fact, laid by anything?), made an inventory of her jewels, rummaged
+in her wardrobe, peeped into her drawers, while the afflicted family
+were still weeping and praying around her death-bed.
+
+Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes's possessions
+in her own right--to use the notarial phrase--might still be recovered,
+and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of francs; basing
+this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,--whose timber, counting
+the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval growths, and the recent
+plantations, had immensely increased in value during the last twelve
+years,--and partly on Balthazar's own property, of which enough remained
+to "cover" the claims of his children, if the liquidation of their
+mother's fortune did not yield sufficient to release him. Mademoiselle
+Claes was still, in Pierquin's slang, "a four-hundred-thousand-franc
+girl." "But," he added, "if she doesn't marry,--a step which would
+of course separate her interests and permit us to sell the forest and
+auction, and so realize the property of the minor children and reinvest
+it where the father can't lay hands on it,--Claes is likely to ruin them
+all."
+
+Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy to
+win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the lawyer the
+compliment of suggesting that he might be the man. Pierquin, however,
+found so many good reasons to reject the suggested matches as unworthy
+of Marguerite's position, that the confabulators glanced at each
+other and smiled, and took malicious pleasure in prolonging this truly
+provincial method of annoyance. Pierquin had already decided that Madame
+Claes's death would have a favorable effect upon his suit, and he began
+mentally to cut up the body in his own interests.
+
+"That good woman," he said to himself as he went home to bed, "was as
+proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey,
+hey! why couldn't I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere
+Claes is drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after
+convincing Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her
+brothers and sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be glad
+to get rid of a girl who is likely to thwart him."
+
+He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded for
+his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the provinces
+there was certainly not a better brought-up or more delicately lovely
+young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her grace, were like
+those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to name lest he
+should betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments were lofty, her
+principles religious, she would undoubtedly make him a faithful wife:
+moreover, she not only flattered the vanity which influences every man
+more or less in the choice of a wife, but she gratified his pride by
+the high consideration which her family, doubly ennobled, enjoyed in
+Flanders,--a consideration which her husband of course would share.
+
+The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several
+thousand-franc notes, which he offered with great friendliness to
+Balthazar, so as to relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst
+of his grief. Touched by this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he
+thought, praise his goodness and his personal qualities to Marguerite.
+In this he was mistaken. Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was
+a very natural action, and their sorrow was too absorbing to let them
+even think of the lawyer.
+
+Balthazar's despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed
+to blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,--less
+on account of the Science which might have excused him, than for
+the remorse which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by
+appearances: it takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic
+worth of the article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species
+of enjoyment, which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its
+thirst for emotions it acquits without judging the man who raises a
+laugh, or he who makes it weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+
+Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority with
+docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of her skin,
+just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the gentleness
+and patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs of feminine
+courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels appointed to shed
+peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving palms. But although
+she trained herself, through a premature perception of duty, to hide her
+personal grief, it was none the less bitter; her calm exterior was not
+in keeping with the deep trouble of her thoughts, and she was destined
+to undergo, too early in life, those terrible outbursts of feeling
+which no heart is wholly able to subdue: her father was to hold her
+incessantly under the pressure of natural youthful generosity on the one
+hand, and the dictates of imperious duty on the other. The cares which
+came upon her the very day of her mother's death threw her into a
+struggle with the interests of life at an age when young girls are
+thinking only of its pleasures. Dreadful discipline of suffering, which
+is never lacking to angelic natures!
+
+The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few days
+after Madame Claes's death he took occasion to speak to Marguerite, and
+began operations with a cleverness which might have succeeded if
+love had not given her the power of clear insight and saved her from
+mistaking appearances that were all the more specious because Pierquin
+displayed his natural kindheartedness,--the kindliness of a notary who
+thinks himself loving while he protects a client's money. Relying on
+his rather distant relationship and his constant habit of managing the
+business and sharing the secrets of the Claes family, sure of the
+esteem and friendship of the father, greatly assisted by the careless
+inattention of that servant of science who took no thought for the
+marriage of his daughter, and not suspecting that Marguerite could
+prefer another,--Pierquin unguardedly enabled her to form a judgment
+on a suit in which there was no passion except that of self-interest,
+always odious to a young soul, and which he was not clever enough to
+conceal. It was he who on this occasion was naively above-board, it was
+she who dissimulated,--simply because he thought he was dealing with a
+defenceless girl, and wholly misconceived the privileges of weakness.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking about
+the paths of the little garden, "you know my heart, you understand how
+truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which absorb you at this
+moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer; I live by my heart
+only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests of others when I
+would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which make life happy. I
+suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of subjects so discordant
+with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I have thought much
+about you during the last few days. It is evident that through a fatal
+delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister and your own are in
+jeopardy. Do you wish to save your family from complete ruin?"
+
+"What must I do?" she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+
+"Marry," answered Pierquin.
+
+"I shall not marry," she said.
+
+"Yes, you will marry," replied the notary, "when you have soberly
+thought over the critical position in which you are placed."
+
+"How can my marriage save--"
+
+"Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin," he exclaimed,
+interrupting her. "Marriage will emancipate you."
+
+"Why should I be emancipated?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your property,
+my dear little cousin," said the lawyer in a tone of triumph. "If you
+marry you take your share of your mother's property. To give it to you,
+the whole property must be liquidated; to do that, it becomes necessary
+to sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the proceeds will be
+capitalized, and your father, as guardian, will be compelled to invest
+the fortune of his children in such a way that Chemistry can't get hold
+of it."
+
+"And if I do not marry, what will happen?" she asked.
+
+"Well," said the notary, "your father will manage your estate as he
+pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the timber
+of the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as the little
+Saint Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred thousand
+francs; but from one day to another you are not sure your father won't
+cut it down, and then your thirteen hundred acres are not worth three
+hundred thousand francs. Isn't it better to avoid this almost certain
+danger by at once compelling the division of property on your marriage?
+If the forest is sold now, while Chemistry has gone to sleep, your
+father will put the proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The Funds are at
+59; those dear children will get nearly five thousand francs a year for
+every fifty thousand francs: and, inasmuch as the property of minors
+cannot be sold out, your brothers and sister will find their fortunes
+doubled in value by the time they come of age. Whereas, in the other
+case,--faith, no one knows what may happen: your father has already
+impaired your mother's property; we shall find out the deficit when we
+come to make the inventory. If he is in debt to her estate, you will
+take a mortgage on his, and in that way something may be recovered--"
+
+"For shame!" said Marguerite. "It would be an outrage on my father.
+It is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have
+forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children," she
+continued, giving way to tears of distress. "You misunderstand him,
+Monsieur Pierquin."
+
+"But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry--"
+
+"We are ruined; is that what you mean?"
+
+"Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite," he said, taking her hand
+which he placed upon his heart, "I should fail of my duty if I did not
+persist in this matter. Your interests alone--"
+
+"Monsieur," said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, "the true
+interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so."
+
+"Cousin," he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+escaping him, "you commit suicide; you fling your mother's property into
+a gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know not
+how I love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball, three
+years ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it speaks
+to you of your own interests, Marguerite." He paused. "Yes, we must call
+a family council and emancipate you--without consulting you," he added.
+
+"But what is it to be emancipated?"
+
+"It is to enjoy your own rights."
+
+"If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+marry? and whom should I marry?"
+
+Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money, that
+Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised tenderness.
+
+"You would marry the person who--pleases you--the most," he said. "A
+husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business. You are
+now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him all
+alone?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister when
+the time comes."
+
+"Pshaw! the obstinate creature," thought Pierquin. "No, you will not
+resist him," he said aloud.
+
+"Let us end the subject," she said.
+
+"Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I
+will prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster
+which all the town foresees."
+
+"I thank you for the interest you take in me," she answered; "but I
+entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+pain to my father."
+
+Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring,
+his glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry
+in which Emmanuel's sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be said,
+or what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose effects
+never deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the passionate
+gestures of a lover may be imitated; a young girl can be deluded by a
+clever comedian; but to succeed, the man must be alone in the field.
+If the young girl has another soul beside her whose pulses vibrate in
+unison with hers, she is able to distinguish the expressions of a true
+love. Emmanuel, like Marguerite, felt the influence of the chords which,
+from the time of their first meeting had gathered ominously about their
+heads, hiding from their eyes the blue skies of love. His feeling for
+the Elect of his heart was an idolatry which the total absence of hope
+rendered gentle and mysterious in its manifestations. Socially too far
+removed from Mademoiselle Claes by his want of fortune, with nothing but
+a noble name to offer her, he saw no chance of ever being her husband.
+Yet he had always hoped for certain encouragements which Marguerite
+refused to give before the failing eyes of her dying mother. Both
+equally pure, they had never said to one another a word of love. Their
+joys were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They trembled apart,
+though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope. They
+seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged
+to the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the
+sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love
+that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed
+in each other's hearts that both were ready to make the greatest
+sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could
+expect to taste.
+
+Since Madame Claes's death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
+The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first,
+were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears. Marguerite's
+reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by
+her mother. With more freedom of action, she nevertheless became more
+distant. Emmanuel shared his beloved's grief, comprehending that the
+slightest word or wish of love at such a time transgressed the laws
+of the heart. Their love was therefore more concealed than it had ever
+been. These tender souls sounded the same note: held apart by grief, as
+formerly by the timidities of youth and by respect for the sufferings of
+the mother, they clung to the magnificent language of the eyes, the mute
+eloquence of devoted actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine
+harmonies of youth, the first steps of a love still in its infancy.
+Emmanuel came every morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he
+never entered the dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring
+a letter from Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in.
+His first glance at the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic
+thoughts; it told her that he suffered under these conventional
+restraints, that he never left her, he was always with her, he shared
+her grief. He shed the tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear
+one by a look that was marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart
+lived so completely in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness
+which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached
+herself for not generously holding out her hand and saying, "Let us at
+least be friends."
+
+Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting
+patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the
+multitude when judging of women. He believed that the words marriage,
+freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and
+flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her
+coldness was mere dissimulation. But surround her as he would with
+gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man
+accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families with a high
+hand. He discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to
+his profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving
+behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity. His
+tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped his feigned melancholy at the
+door when he put on his overshoes, or took his umbrella. He used the
+tone his long intimacy authorized as an instrument to work himself still
+further into the bosom of the family, and bring Marguerite to a marriage
+which the whole town was beginning to foresee. The true, devoted,
+respectful love formed a striking contrast to its selfish, calculating
+semblance. Each man's conduct was homogenous: one feigned a passion and
+seized every advantage to gain the prize; the other hid his love and
+trembled lest he should betray his devotion.
+
+Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the
+same day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom she
+had any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which she
+was condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to those who
+might think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a fine morning
+in April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur Claes was going
+out. The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to Balthazar that he
+spent part of every day in walking about the ramparts. Emmanuel made a
+motion as if to follow him, then he hesitated, seemed to gather up his
+courage, looked at Marguerite and remained. The young girl felt sure
+that he wished to speak with her, and asked him to go into the garden;
+then she sent Felicie to Martha, who was sewing in the antechamber on
+the upper floor, and seated herself on a garden-seat in full view of her
+sister and the old duenna.
+
+"Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by science,"
+began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed the
+court-yard. "Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man who has
+lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he gazes
+without seeing anything."
+
+"Every sorrow has its own expression," said Marguerite, checking her
+tears. "What is it you wish to say to me?" she added after a pause,
+coldly and with dignity.
+
+"Mademoiselle," answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, "I scarcely
+know if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think only
+of my desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a teacher
+to be interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother Gabriel is over
+fifteen; he is in the second class; it is now necessary to direct his
+studies in the line of whatever future career he may take up. It is for
+your father to decide what that career shall be: if he gives the matter
+no thought, the injury to Gabriel would be serious. But then, again,
+would it not mortify your father if you showed him that he is neglecting
+his son's interests? Under these circumstances, could you not yourself
+consult Gabriel as to his tastes, and help him to choose a career, so
+that later, if his father should think of making him a public officer,
+an administrator, a soldier, he might be prepared with some special
+training? I do not suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish
+to bring Gabriel up in idleness."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Marguerite; "when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often
+said we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel ought
+to have a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me, what
+career is best for a man to choose?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, "Gabriel is
+at the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the
+Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge
+which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can
+choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus,
+without compromising his future, you will have saved a great deal of
+time. Men who leave the Ecole with honors are sought after on all sides;
+the school turns out statesmen, diplomats, men of science, engineers,
+generals, sailors, magistrates, manufacturers, and bankers. There is
+nothing extraordinary in the son of a rich or noble family preparing
+himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on this course I shall ask you
+to--will you grant my request? Say yes!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Let me be his tutor," he answered, trembling.
+
+Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and
+said, "Yes"--and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:--
+
+"How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have
+thought for us. I thank you."
+
+Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not to
+show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to his
+eyes.
+
+"I will bring both boys to see you," he said, when he was a little
+calmer; "to-morrow is a holiday."
+
+He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when
+he had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door of
+the dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+
+After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had
+sat that morning.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Balthazar, "I have come to-night to talk
+to you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your
+wife."
+
+"I keep no account of time," said Balthazar, wiping away the tears that
+came at the word "decease."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, "how can you?"
+
+"But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the limits
+of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you and your
+co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he must
+make an inventory of his property within forty-five days of his wife's
+decease, so as to render in his accounts at the end of that time. It is
+necessary to know the value of his property before deciding whether to
+accept it as sufficient security, or whether we must fall back on the
+legal rights of minors."
+
+Marguerite rose.
+
+"Do not go away, my dear cousin," continued Pierquin; "my words concern
+you--you and your father both. You know how truly I share your grief,
+but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If you do not,
+every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am only doing my
+duty as the family lawyer."
+
+"He is right," said Claes.
+
+"The time expires in two days," resumed Pierquin; "and I must begin the
+inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the legacy-tax
+which the public treasurer will come here and demand. Treasurers have no
+hearts; they don't trouble themselves about feelings; they fasten their
+claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore for the next two days my clerk
+and I will be here from ten till four with Monsieur Raparlier, the
+public appraiser. After we get through the town property we shall go
+into the country. As for the forest of Waignies, we shall be obliged to
+hold a consultation about that. Now let us turn to another matter.
+We must call a family council and appoint a guardian to protect the
+interests of the minor children. Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your
+nearest relative; but he has now become a Belgian. You ought," continued
+Pierquin, addressing Balthazar, "to write to him on this matter; you can
+then find out if he has any intention of settling in France, where he
+has a fine property. Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to
+move into French Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making
+up the council with the other near relatives."
+
+"What is the use of an inventory?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts
+and its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family council,
+acting on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it sees fit."
+
+"Pierquin," said Claes, rising from the bench, "do all that is necessary
+to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the distress
+of selling the things that belonged to my dear--" he was unable to
+continue; but he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of such deep
+feeling that Marguerite took her father's hand and kissed it.
+
+"To-morrow, then," said Pierquin.
+
+"Come to breakfast," said Claes; then he seemed to gather his scattered
+senses together and exclaimed: "But in my marriage contract, which was
+drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from the obligation
+of making an inventory, in order that she might not be annoyed by it: it
+is very probable that I was equally released--"
+
+"Oh, what happiness!" cried Marguerite. "It would have been so
+distressing to us."
+
+"Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow," said the
+notary, rather confused.
+
+"Then you did not know of this?" said Marguerite.
+
+This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused
+to continue it after the young girl's comment.
+
+"The devil is in it!" he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+"That man's wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of
+time,--just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions
+against him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those
+children. I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding
+with old Conyncks, and here's the end of it! I shall lose ground with
+Marguerite, for she will certainly ask her father why I wanted an
+inventory of the property, which she now sees was not necessary; and
+Claes will tell her that notaries have a passion for writing documents,
+that we are lawyers above all, above cousins or friends or relatives,
+and all such stuff as that."
+
+He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+themselves by sensitiveness.
+
+Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore, was
+done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the matter
+of property.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis,
+worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the
+necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and
+Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father's
+country place as a measure of economy. Monsieur Claes attended to his
+business affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a considerable sum of
+money on his property, and went to see the forest at Waignies.
+
+About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him
+a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he
+was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled bravely
+against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset him; he
+forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think of it.
+Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind to his
+researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled his
+passion which soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he was
+really bound not to continue his researches, and remembered that his
+wife had refused his oath. Though he had pledged his word to himself
+that he would never pursue the solution of the great Problem, might he
+not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw success? He
+was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant idea contracts a
+certain peevish fixedness which is the first stage of monomania.
+
+Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace
+which Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries
+and scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of
+various countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists themselves,
+towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted to the higher
+sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat, electricity, galvanism,
+magnetism were all different effects of the same cause, and that the
+difference existing between substances hitherto considered simple must
+be produced by varying proportions of an unknown principle. The fear
+that some other chemist might effect the reduction of metals and
+discover the constituent principle of electricity,--two achievements
+which would lead to the solution of the chemical Absolute,--increased
+what the people of Douai called a mania, and drove his desires to a
+paroxysm conceivable to those who devote themselves to the sciences, or
+who have ever known the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion all
+the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite,
+who watched every evidence of her father's state of mind, opened the
+long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+which her mother's death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+re-awaking her father's grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She determined
+to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its distractions.
+Several good marriages were proposed to her, which occupied Claes's
+mind, but to all of them she replied that she should not marry until
+after she was twenty-five. But in spite of his daughter's efforts, in
+spite of his remorseful struggles, Balthazar, at the beginning of the
+winter, returned secretly to his researches. It was difficult, however,
+to hide his operations from the inquisitive women in the kitchen; and
+one morning Martha, while dressing Marguerite, said to her:--
+
+"Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier--who
+is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the
+cross--has gone back to the garret. There's monsieur on the high-road to
+hell. Pray God he mayn't kill you as he killed my poor mistress."
+
+"It is not possible!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"Come and see the signs of their traffic."
+
+Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
+the flue of the laboratory.
+
+"I shall be twenty-one in a few months," she thought, "and I shall know
+how to oppose the destruction of our property."
+
+In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
+for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
+happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
+more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in
+his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man
+profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked
+night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know
+how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+
+Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of
+a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
+noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
+necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
+left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went
+to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters
+without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs
+they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss
+him on both cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great domestic
+misfortunes had Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the authority
+of a mother, and if, moreover, she were not protected by a secret love
+from the dangers of so much liberty.
+
+Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+would soon be complete. Balthazar's rural estates, which yielded sixteen
+thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
+now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
+francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed
+a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
+interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who
+is the slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to
+Marguerite for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated
+that three years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the
+law would step in and eat up all that Balthazar had not squandered.
+Marguerite's coldness brought Pierquin to a state of almost hostile
+indifference. To give himself an appearance in the eyes of the world of
+having renounced her hand, he frequently remarked of the Claes family in
+a tone of compassion:--
+
+"Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well,
+it can't be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal means
+which might have rescued them from poverty."
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in Douai,
+thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits which made
+him worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two young girls,
+who called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as their father had
+gone to bed. Emmanuel's gentle rap at the street-door was never missing.
+For the last three months, encouraged by the gracious, though mute
+gratitude with which Marguerite now accepted his attentions, he became
+at his ease, and was seen for what he was. The brightness of his pure
+spirit shone like a flawless diamond; Marguerite learned to understand
+its strength and its constancy when she saw how inexhaustible was the
+source from which it came. She loved to watch the unfolding, one by one,
+of the blossoms of his heart, whose perfume she had already breathed.
+Each day Emmanuel realized some one of Marguerite's hopes, and illumined
+the enchanted regions of love with new lights that chased away the
+clouds and brought to view the serene heavens, giving color to the
+fruitful riches hidden away in the shadow of their lives. More at his
+ease, the young man could display the seductive qualities of his heart
+until now discreetly hidden, the expansive gaiety of his age, the
+simplicity which comes of a life of study, the treasures of a delicate
+mind that life has not adulterated, the innocent joyousness which goes
+so well with loving youth. His soul and Marguerite's understood each
+other better; they went together to the depths of their hearts and
+found in each the same thoughts,--pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh
+harmonies like those the legends tell of beneath the waves, which
+fascinate the divers. They made themselves known to one another by an
+interchange of thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs,
+in both, of exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but
+not without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the
+sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of anguish
+and renunciation on which she had entered. This artless, progressive
+love was her support. In all his testimonies of affection Emmanuel
+showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet yet subtile mind
+which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of a diamond
+relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,--adorable
+wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the
+artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with
+novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it
+is an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to
+a woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her heart and yet
+not blight it. The more Emmanuel was free to utter himself, the more
+charming were the expressions of his love.
+
+"I have tried to get here before Pierquin," he said to Marguerite one
+evening. "He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it from
+me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at Waignies
+to speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are already
+felled, and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three
+hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price,
+which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off
+his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand
+francs of the three hundred thousand still due to him on the
+purchase-money."
+
+Pierquin entered at this moment.
+
+"Ah! my dear cousin," he said, "you are ruined. I told you how it
+would be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an insatiable
+appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your family
+guardian, Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam, and Claes
+has seized the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all wrong. I have
+written to Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too late; everything
+will be squandered. You will be obliged to sue your father. The suit
+can't be long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur Conyncks has no
+alternative but to institute proceedings; the law requires it. This
+is the result of your obstinacy. Do you now see my prudence, and how
+devoted I was to your interests?"
+
+"I bring you some good news, mademoiselle," said young de Solis in his
+gentle voice. "Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. The
+difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed."
+
+Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:--
+
+"My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+Gabriel's outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard," she
+added, kissing her sister's forehead.
+
+"To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days," said
+Emmanuel; "he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November."
+
+"My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing," said the lawyer, eyeing
+the professor from head to foot; "for he will have to make his own way.
+But, my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of the
+family: will you listen to what I say this time?"
+
+"No," she said, "not if it relates to marriage."
+
+"Then what will you do?"
+
+"I?--nothing."
+
+"But you are of age."
+
+"I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me," she
+added, "which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+father and to the honor of the family?"
+
+"My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+does, I will call again."
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Marguerite.
+
+"The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself," thought the notary.
+"Adieu, mademoiselle," he said aloud. "Monsieur, my respects to you";
+and he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+
+"I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have
+consulted an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle," said
+Emmanuel, in a hesitating voice. "If you will allow me, I will go
+to Amsterdam to-morrow and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear
+Marguerite--"
+
+He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile and
+a tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He paused,
+looking at Felicie and Martha.
+
+"Speak before my sister," said Marguerite. "She is so docile and
+courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned
+to our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see
+for herself how necessary courage is to us."
+
+The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew some
+pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+
+"Leave us, Martha."
+
+"Dear Marguerite," said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of
+his voice, "I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers
+who still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled
+timber. To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name
+of Monsieur Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an
+injunction upon them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will have
+returned, the family council can be called together, and Gabriel put
+in possession of his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and your
+brother being thus authorized to use those rights, you will demand your
+share in the proceeds of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot refuse you
+the two hundred thousand francs on which the injunction will have been
+put; as to the remaining hundred thousand which is due to you, you
+must obtain a mortgage on this house. Monsieur Conyncks will demand
+securities for the three hundred thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean.
+Under these circumstances your father will be obliged to mortgage his
+property on the plain of Orchies, which he has already encumbered to the
+amount of three hundred thousand francs. The law gives a retrospective
+priority to the claims of minors; and that will save you. Monsieur
+Claes's hands will be tied for the future; your property becomes
+inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his own estates because they
+will be held as security for other sums. Moreover, the whole can be
+done quietly, without scandal or legal proceedings. Your father will be
+forced to greater prudence in making his researches, even if he cannot
+be persuaded to relinquish them altogether."
+
+"Yes," said Marguerite, "but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain a
+mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live
+here. The proceeds of my father's property in the country will pay the
+interest on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but how
+are we to live?"
+
+"In the first place," said Emmanuel, "by investing the fifty thousand
+francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get,
+according to present rates, more than four thousand francs' income,
+which will suffice to pay your brother's board and lodging and all his
+other expenses in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is of
+age, therefore you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it, and
+you will have one expense the less. Besides, you will have your own
+fifty thousand."
+
+"My father will ask me for them," she said in a frightened tone; "and I
+shall not be able to refuse him."
+
+"Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing yourself.
+Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name: it will bring you
+twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who are emancipated
+cannot sell property without permission of the family council; you will
+thus gain three years' peace of mind. By that time your father will
+either have solved his problem or renounced it; and Gabriel, then of
+age, will reinvest the money in your own name."
+
+Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which she
+did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see this
+pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought with him
+to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of
+minors; she quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural
+penetration of women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+
+Gabriel came home to his father's house on the following day. When
+Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his admission
+to the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor with a wave
+of his hand, and said:--
+
+"I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science."
+
+"Oh, my brother," cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+laboratory, "work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass your
+time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits which
+ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly three
+thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for your
+pocket-money; that is surely enough."
+
+"I will answer for him," said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on his
+pupil's shoulder.
+
+A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite,
+had obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely
+proposed by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to
+face with the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense
+of honor allowed no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the
+timber to which he had consented at a moment when he was harassed by
+creditors, submitted to all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair the
+almost involuntary wrong that he had done to his children, he signed the
+deeds in a preoccupied way. He was now as careless and improvident as a
+Negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop of brandy, and cries
+for her at night. He gave no thought to even the immediate future, and
+never asked himself what resources he would have when his last ducat was
+melted up. He pursued his work and continued his purchases, apparently
+unaware that he was now no more than the titular owner of his house and
+lands, and that he could not, thanks to the severity of the laws, raise
+another penny upon a property of which he was now, as it were, the legal
+guardian.
+
+The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters
+paid the costs of Jean's education and met all the expenses of the
+household out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum placed
+in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name, which he punctually remitted to
+them. Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in December of that
+year.
+
+Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house,
+and all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and
+forks that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and
+these she now ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day
+Marguerite had kept silence towards her father on the subject of his
+depredations, but that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to
+leave her alone with him, and when he seated himself as usual by the
+corner of the parlor fireplace, she said:--
+
+"My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything,
+even your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I am
+forced to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely enough
+to live on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night and day to
+pay for the schooling of little Jean with the price of the lace dress
+we are now making. My dear father, I implore you to give up your
+researches."
+
+"You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished;
+I shall have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved
+undiscoverable. You will have millions--"
+
+"Give us meanwhile the bread to eat," replied Marguerite.
+
+"Bread? is there no bread here?" said Claes, with a frightened air. "No
+bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?"
+
+"You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been
+cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies,
+the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have
+borrowed--"
+
+"Then what are we living on?" he demanded.
+
+Marguerite held up her needle and continued:--
+
+"Gabriel's income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both ends
+meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that
+I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think
+I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for
+potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me."
+
+"My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders."
+
+"It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
+everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain
+from making debts."
+
+"I don't wish to make any more!" he said.
+
+"Any more?" she cried, "then you have some?"
+
+"Mere trifles," he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+
+For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
+lowering of her father's character, and suffered from it so much that
+she dared not question him.
+
+A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
+the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
+amount, falling due in consecutive months.
+
+"All is over!" cried Marguerite, "the time has come."
+
+She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+steps, talking to herself:--
+
+"A hundred thousand francs!" she cried. "I must find them, or see my
+father in prison. What am I to do?"
+
+Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
+the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
+brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
+here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
+products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
+pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
+and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
+upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure
+of Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a
+workman, his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered
+it. His eyes were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough.
+The receiver of this instrument was covered with a lens made of
+double convex glasses, the space between the glasses being filled
+with alchohol, which focussed the light coming through one of the
+compartments of the rose-window of the garret. The shelf of the receiver
+communicated with the wire of an immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier,
+busy at the moment in moving the pedestal of the machine, which was
+placed on a movable axle so as to keep the lens in a perpendicular
+direction to the rays of the sun, turned round, his face black with
+dust, and called out,--
+
+"Ha! mademoiselle, don't come in."
+
+The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument,
+and receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads
+of silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
+strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
+of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to spring,
+all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in terror,--
+
+"He is mad!"
+
+Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Send away
+Lemulquinier."
+
+"No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no one
+has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
+for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
+complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
+At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
+about to show results which I alone--"
+
+"My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
+paying your notes of hand--"
+
+"Wait, wait!"
+
+"Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten thousand
+francs by four o'clock."
+
+"Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
+this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If I
+could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful."
+
+He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
+rolled from his eyes.
+
+"Monsieur is quite right," said Lemulquinier; "it is all the fault of
+that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!"
+
+Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+
+"Leave us, Mulquinier," she said.
+
+"Ah! I see a new experiment!" cried Claes.
+
+"Father, lay aside your experiments," said his daughter, when they were
+alone. "You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have not
+a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will
+become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs
+and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow
+it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful
+to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our
+position; see reason at last!"
+
+"Madness!" cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his
+luminous eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and
+repeated the word "Madness!" so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "your mother would never have uttered that word to me.
+She was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned
+a science to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human
+race; she knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The
+feelings of a loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial
+affection. Yes, Love is above all other feelings. See reason!" he went
+on, striking his breast. "Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say
+we are poor; well, my daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your father,
+obey me. I will make you rich when I please. Your fortune? it is a
+pittance! When I find the solvent of carbon I will fill your parlor
+with diamonds, and they are but a scintilla of what I seek. You can well
+afford to wait while I consume my life in superhuman efforts."
+
+"Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you have
+already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of
+my mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him,
+doubtless, as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to him,
+as she sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving myself
+wholly to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling you to
+render an account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past and
+think of the present. I am here now to represent the necessity which you
+have created for yourself. You must have money to meet your notes--do
+you understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but the portrait
+of your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of my mother, who
+felt herself too feeble to defend her children against their father;
+she ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my brothers and my
+sister; I come, father, in the name of all the Claes, and I command
+you to give up your experiments, or earn the means of pursuing them
+hereafter, if pursue them you must. If you arm yourself with the power
+of your paternity, which you employ only for our destruction, I have on
+my side your ancestors and your honor, whose voice is louder than that
+of chemistry. The Family is greater than Science. I have been too long
+your daughter."
+
+"And you choose to be my executioner," he said, in a feeble voice.
+
+Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
+she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother's voice
+saying to her, "Do not oppose your father too much; love him well."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said
+Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. "We were
+just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap
+of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he's almost in the shoes
+of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT," he said to Josette,
+clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting hold of the
+Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about
+notes of hand."
+
+"Well, pay them yourself," said Martha, "out of your wages."
+
+"Where's the butter for my bread?" said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+
+"Where's the money to buy it?" she answered, sharply. "Come, old
+villain, if you make gold in that devil's kitchen of yours, why don't
+you make butter? 'Twouldn't be half so difficult, and you could sell it
+in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The
+young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to
+be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won't spend more than one
+hundred francs a month for the whole household. There's only one dinner
+for all. If you want dainties you've got your furnaces upstairs where
+you fricassee pearls till there's nothing else talked of in town. Get
+your roast chickens up there."
+
+Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+
+"He will go and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha;
+"all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old
+scarecrow!"
+
+"Starve him! that's the only way to manage him," said Josette. "For a
+week past he hasn't rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
+he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the
+present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on
+them, I can tell him that."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Martha, "I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
+wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking
+a Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he'd be burned
+alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa."
+
+Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
+gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother's letter, and read as
+follows:--
+
+  My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+
+Josephine.
+
+
+To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
+uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
+entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
+children should present the paper.
+
+"Martha," cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; "go to
+Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble, discreet
+heart! he never told me," she thought; "though all my griefs and cares
+are his, he never told me!"
+
+Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+
+"You have kept a secret from me," she said, showing him her mother's
+letter.
+
+Emmanuel bent his head.
+
+"Marguerite, are you in great trouble?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "be my support,--you, whom my mother calls 'our
+good Emmanuel.'" She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
+knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+
+"My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
+saw you in the gallery," he said; "but I scarcely dared to hope the time
+might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know
+my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your
+mother's wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions."
+
+"You have saved us," she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
+go down to the parlor.
+
+After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
+found themselves.
+
+"I must pay those notes at once," said Emmanuel. "If Merkstus holds them
+all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
+seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
+ducats, which are easy to carry secretly."
+
+"Oh!" she said, "bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
+asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me.
+Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!" she said, weeping
+and resting her forehead against the young man's heart.
+
+This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
+protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
+melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full,
+was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+
+"What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live in
+that garret, where the air is stifling."
+
+"What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
+'My kingdom for a horse'?" said Emmanuel. "He is pitiless; and in that
+you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
+fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours
+nor his."
+
+"Give him my fortune?" she said, pressing her lover's hand and looking
+at him with ardor in her eyes; "you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told a
+hundred lies to make me keep it!"
+
+"Alas! I may be selfish in my own way," he said. "Sometimes I long for
+you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
+you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+grandeurs of wealth can separate us."
+
+"Dear, let us not speak of ourselves."
+
+"Ourselves!" he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+"The evil is great, but it is not irreparable."
+
+"It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head.
+To reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
+consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he
+has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
+the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
+fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?"
+
+"Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
+for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
+you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
+ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
+nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it."
+
+"My poor mother is happy," said Marguerite; "she would have suffered
+a thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless."
+
+"There is an end," said Emmanuel. "When you have nothing left, Monsieur
+Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop."
+
+"Let him stop now, then," cried Marguerite, "for we are without a
+penny!"
+
+Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes's notes and returned, bringing
+them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
+moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
+noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father,
+reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard,
+then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his
+daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
+
+"My child," he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+tenderness, "forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
+wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
+wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold," he went
+on, pointing to the martyr's portrait. "He died for Liberty, I die for
+Science; he is venerated, I am hated."
+
+"Hated? oh, my father, no," she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
+"we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?" she said, turning to her sister
+who came in at the moment.
+
+"What is the matter, dear father?" said his youngest daughter, taking
+his hand.
+
+"I have ruined you."
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, "but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+always at the head of his class."
+
+"See, father," said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
+way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock,
+"here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing
+left to pay them with--"
+
+"Then you have money?" whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
+from his surprise.
+
+His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
+joy and hope in her father's face as he looked about him to discover the
+gold.
+
+"Father," she said, "I have my own fortune."
+
+"Give it to me," he said with a rapacious gesture; "I will return you a
+hundred-fold."
+
+"Yes, I will give it to you," answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+
+"Ah, my dear daughter!" he cried, "you save my life. I have thought of a
+last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I
+do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms,
+my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You
+give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to
+heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you with jewels, with
+wealth."
+
+He kissed his daughter's forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
+testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
+obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at
+her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
+mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
+rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his
+attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature old
+age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast
+of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a
+glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
+
+"Well, well," he said, following her eyes, "in six months we shall fill
+them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
+Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
+beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita," he said, smiling,
+"thy name is a prophecy. 'Margarita' means a pearl. Sterne says so
+somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
+would amuse you."
+
+"A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease," she answered; "we have
+suffered enough already."
+
+"Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
+be rich and all-powerful."
+
+"Mademoiselle has got such a good heart," said Lemulquinier, whose
+seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+
+For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
+the natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
+Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic
+fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit,
+which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters
+into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first
+time in many months, the father and the children reunited. The young
+professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the
+scene; for Claes's manners and conversation had recovered their former
+irresistible seduction!
+
+Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
+More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
+are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget
+all; they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own
+souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of
+all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their
+power to observe and recognize that which goes on around them, they are
+satisfied with having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them
+on, and they frequently make false application of the knowledge they
+have acquired about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their
+social apathy, or they drop from the world of thought to the world of
+life; at such times they come with well-stored memories, and are by no
+means strangers to what is happening.
+
+Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
+brain, knew his daughter's whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
+history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed
+this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it.
+It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were
+unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,--contrasting
+with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When
+Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light
+and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some
+embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in
+gold, the possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them
+on the work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she
+was mending; and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the
+money. When he returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o'clock struck;
+Martha, who sat up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
+
+"Where can we hide it?" said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
+of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
+disastrous.
+
+"I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow," said Emmanuel;
+"you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
+looking for them there."
+
+Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table
+to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry,
+and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and
+the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor
+door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+
+"What are you doing," he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
+terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
+hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
+sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
+horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
+
+"I could not be mistaken," said Balthazar, sitting down; "I heard the
+sound of gold."
+
+He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
+beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking
+of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the
+parlor.
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur de Solis," said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
+glance which meant, "Come to my rescue and help me to save this money."
+
+"What gold is this?" resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
+Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+
+"This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
+to me that I may pay our debts honorably," she answered.
+
+Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
+caught him by the arm.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you must not escape my thanks."
+
+"Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
+Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,"
+Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an
+almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+
+"I shall not allow that," said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
+paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+astonished young people. "How much is it?" His eager passion made him
+more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
+his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+
+"Let us count it," he said.
+
+"There are six thousand ducats," said Emmanuel.
+
+"Seventy thousand francs," remarked Claes.
+
+The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
+thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means
+of paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
+hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
+can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
+that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
+denuded land of the forest of Waignies."
+
+Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel's purity of soul. Brought
+up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
+young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
+and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
+conscience.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Balthazar, "I thought you had more confidence in
+a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father."
+
+After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
+out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+
+The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
+
+"You love me, do you not?"
+
+"Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it."
+
+She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
+them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed
+him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand
+ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,--
+
+"Marguerite, I must have that money."
+
+"If you take it, it will be robbery," she replied coldly. "Hear me,
+father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths
+a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield."
+
+"Do you mean to kill your father?"
+
+"We avenge our mother," she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
+Claes died.
+
+"My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
+those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
+problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me," he cried in accents of
+despair. "Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes,
+I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the word
+of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children are
+sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
+my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
+myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will do
+your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no longer be
+the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my authority. I
+swear by your mother's memory!" he cried, shedding tears.
+
+Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
+thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+
+"Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!" he cried. "What are
+sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
+will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
+labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I will go
+away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes
+I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
+them."
+
+Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
+his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
+
+"Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
+myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall
+say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and
+incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands.
+You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as
+the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood."
+
+"If it were my blood, my life's blood, I would give it to you," she
+cried; "but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister?
+No. Cease, cease!" she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her
+father's caressing hands.
+
+"Sixty thousand francs and two months," he said, rising in anger; "that
+is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth.
+I curse you!" he went on; "you are no daughter of mine, you are not a
+woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!--Give it
+to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
+forever,"--and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous energy
+towards the gold.
+
+"I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
+us now," she said, pointing to the picture.
+
+"Try to live, if you can, with your father's blood upon you," cried
+Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
+might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
+replied by a negative motion of her head.
+
+"Farewell, my daughter," he said, gently, "may you live happy!"
+
+When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
+her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness
+of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities
+of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and
+Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to
+her that days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up
+the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter
+his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with
+the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without
+light, without noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father
+with a pistol at his head.
+
+"Take all!" she cried, springing towards him.
+
+She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
+old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
+her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+
+"Enough, father, enough," she said; "remember your promise. If you do
+not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, mother!" she cried, turning towards Madame Claes's chamber, "YOU
+would have given him all--would you not?"
+
+"Sleep in peace," said Balthazar, "you are a good daughter."
+
+"Sleep!" she said, "the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
+old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother's heart."
+
+"Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
+the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
+the truth."
+
+"I comprehend our ruin," she said, leaving him.
+
+The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
+spend the day.
+
+"Well?" he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+
+"I yielded," she replied.
+
+"My dear life," he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, "if you had
+withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
+adore you!"
+
+"Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?"
+
+"Leave the future to me," cried the young man, with a radiant look; "we
+love each other, and all is well."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
+and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
+of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
+well-being of the household.
+
+During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which beset
+her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she might
+be, she had come to hope in her father's genius. By an inexplicable
+phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no faith. Hope is the
+flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty. Marguerite said
+to herself, "If my father succeeds, we shall be happy." Claes and
+Lemulquinier alone said: "We shall succeed." Unhappily, from day to day
+the Searcher's face grew sadder. Sometimes, when he came to dinner he
+dared not look at his daughter; at other times he glanced at her in
+triumph. Marguerite employed her evenings in making young de Solis
+explain to her many legal points and difficulties. At last her masculine
+education was completed; she was evidently preparing herself to execute
+the plan she had resolved upon if her father were again vanquished in
+his duel with the Unknown (X).
+
+About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound
+now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife's chamber; he shuddered,
+no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his
+movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science.
+Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while before
+dinner.
+
+"You have not succeeded, father?"
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Ah!" said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. "I will not say one word of
+reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of
+your promise; it is surely sacred to you--you are a Claes. Your children
+will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now belong to
+me; you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be gentle,
+and I will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I am going
+to leave you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs; for," she
+said, kissing him on his brow, "you are now my child. I take Martha with
+me; to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor child is
+only seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you; therefore be
+generous, do not ask her for money; she has only enough for the barest
+necessaries of the household. Take courage: renounce your labors and
+your thoughts for three or four years. The great problem may ripen
+towards discovery; by that time I shall have gathered the money that
+is necessary to solve it,--and you will solve it. Tell me, father, your
+queen is clement, is she not?"
+
+"Then all is not lost?" said the old man.
+
+"No, not if you keep your word."
+
+"I will obey you, my daughter," answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+
+The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his
+great-niece. He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain
+long enough for Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements.
+Monsieur Claes received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously
+sad and humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with
+blunt frankness while they were breakfasting:--
+
+"I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,--a
+ruinous passion, but we all have our manias."
+
+"Dear uncle!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of
+a Claes is there," said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, "and here,"
+striking his heart; "don't you think so? I count upon you: and for that
+reason, having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use in
+your service."
+
+"Ah!" cried Balthazar, "I will repay you with treasures--"
+
+"The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,"
+replied Conyncks, sternly. "Our ancestor has those words engraved upon
+his brow," he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur Conyncks
+for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a daughter
+twelve years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune. It was not
+impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the good people of
+Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her great-uncle. The
+rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought him back in hot
+haste to the House of Claes.
+
+Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
+For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
+camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
+latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
+place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
+into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
+were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830,
+was accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the
+one ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of
+functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance,
+to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall
+of the legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
+between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes" displayed
+an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so brilliantly
+that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the lives of some
+of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand
+such practice. The two societies naturally became exclusive.
+
+Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-love
+must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received when
+he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had rubbed
+shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now reached his
+fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends to marry can
+think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able to aspire were
+all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to enter the upper
+circle by means of some creditable alliance.
+
+The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
+kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to the
+old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind prevented him
+from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However poor a daughter
+of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband the dower of social
+vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus. Pierquin therefore returned
+to his allegiance, with the secret intention of making the necessary
+sacrifices to conclude a marriage which should realize all his
+ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar and Felicie during
+Marguerite's absence; but in so doing he discovered, rather late in the
+day, a formidable competitor in Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the
+deceased abbe was thought to be considerable, and to the eyes of a man
+who calculated all the affairs of life in figures, the young heir seemed
+more powerful through his money than through the seductions of the
+heart--as to which Pierquin never made himself uneasy. In his mind the
+abbe's fortune restored the de Solis name to all its pristine value.
+Gold and nobility of birth were two orbs which reflected lustre on one
+another and doubled the illumination.
+
+The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin's spirit of emulation. He
+tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and sundry
+expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and business
+airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he declared
+himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as if to let
+her know that she alone could reconcile him with life. Felicie, who
+received for the first time in her life the compliments of a man,
+listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive; she took
+emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix the vague
+emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind.
+Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving attentions
+with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless wished to be,
+like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of a man.
+
+Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
+over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in
+his attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
+intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps
+in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon,
+little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind
+Emmanuel's back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a
+meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes.
+Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the
+secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were really a
+question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but,
+notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither
+Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good reason
+that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins
+of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as to her
+projects.
+
+The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
+difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
+making him play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present; during
+most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid.
+Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes,
+a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the
+burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of
+genius, gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic
+spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even
+Pierquin could not enter without respect the presence of that caged
+lion, whose eyes, full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded
+from excess of light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the
+mouth dared not utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered
+face, whose fires revived at the conception of a new experiment; then,
+as he looked about the parlor, Balthazar's eyes would fasten on the spot
+where his wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand
+across the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense,
+and his head fell forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the
+world, and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
+
+This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man the
+necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the convictions
+of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes and Marguerite
+had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly checked the
+impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in efforts at
+consolation which still further embittered the anguish of the doomed
+Titan.
+
+Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in her
+departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either to him
+or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her he seemed
+annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against him? Was he
+humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of paternity to his
+own child? Had he come to love her less because she was now the father,
+he the child? Perhaps there were many of these reasons, many of these
+inexpressible feelings which float like vapors through the soul, in the
+mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite. However great may be the
+great men of earth, be they known or unknown, fortunate or unfortunate
+in their endeavors, all have likenesses which belong to human nature.
+By a double misfortune they suffer through their greatness not less than
+through their defects; and perhaps Balthazar needed to grow accustomed
+to the pangs of wounded vanity. The life he was leading, the evenings
+when these four persons met together in Marguerite's absence, were full
+of sadness and vague, uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like
+a parched-up soil; where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few
+rare consolations, though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the
+strength of the family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+
+Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the
+return of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her
+uncle who remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no
+doubt to lend the weight of his authority to some coup d'etat planned
+by his niece. Marguerite's return was made a family fete. Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar. When
+the travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went to meet
+it with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see her home
+once more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the court-yard
+to reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored like a guilty
+wife who is unable to dissimulate; but her face recovered its serenity
+as she looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed to gather strength to
+complete a work she had secretly undertaken.
+
+Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the dinner,
+father and daughter watched each other with distrust and curiosity.
+Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in Paris,
+doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis imitated
+his reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family secrets,
+said to Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of
+liveliness:--
+
+"Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres--"
+
+"I have seen little of Paris," she said; "I did not go there for
+amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai once
+more."
+
+"Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+Opera; and even there she was uneasy," said Monsieur Conyncks.
+
+It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite
+and Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the
+rest. As the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew
+more and more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but
+her motions, her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen anxiety.
+Messieurs Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of the secret
+feelings which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared to encourage
+her by expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept from a
+knowledge of the steps that had been taken on his behalf, withdrew
+little by little from his children and friends, and pointedly kept
+silence. Marguerite would no doubt soon disclose what she had decided
+upon for his future.
+
+To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age
+a man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and more
+thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he would be
+forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of those crises
+in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by imagery. The
+thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were laughing in the
+fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was coming, but they held
+up their heads and continued on their way. Monsieur Conyncks was the
+first to leave the room, conducted by Balthazar to his chamber.
+During the latter's absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis went away.
+Marguerite bade the notary good-night with much affection; she said
+nothing to Emmanuel, but she pressed his hand and gave him a tearful
+glance. She sent Felicie away, and when Claes returned to the parlor he
+found his daughter alone.
+
+"My kind father," she said in a trembling voice, "nothing could have
+made me leave home but the serious position in which we found
+ourselves; but now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest
+difficulties, I return with some chances of deliverance for all of us.
+Thanks to your name, and to my uncle's influence, and to the support
+of Monsieur de Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under
+government as receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth, they
+say, eighteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has given
+bonds as your security. Here is the nomination," she added, drawing
+a paper from her bag. "Your life in Douai, in this house, during the
+coming years of privation and sacrifice would be intolerable to you. Our
+father must be placed in a situation at least equal to that in which he
+has always lived. I ask nothing from the salary you will receive from
+this appointment; employ it as you see fit. I will only beg you to
+remember that we have not a penny of income, and that we must live on
+what Gabriel can give us out of his. The town shall know nothing of
+our inner life. If you were still to live in this house you would be
+an obstacle to the means my sister and I are about to employ to restore
+comfort and ease to the home. Have I abused the authority you gave me by
+putting you in a position to remake your own fortune? In a few years, if
+you so will, you can easily become the receiver-general."
+
+"In other words, Marguerite," said Balthazar, gently, "you turn me out
+of my own house."
+
+"I do not deserve that bitter reproach," replied the daughter, quelling
+the tumultuous beatings of her heart. "You will come back to us in a
+manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your promise.
+You are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he might himself
+accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone."
+
+"I shall not go," said Balthazar, rising; "I need no help from any one
+to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children."
+
+"It would be better, certainly," replied Marguerite, calmly. "But now I
+ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in
+a few words. If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so
+that you may remain its master."
+
+"Marguerite!" cried Balthazar.
+
+"In that case," she said, continuing her words without taking notice of
+her father's anger, "it will be necessary to notify the minister of your
+refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post,
+which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but
+for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a
+lady."
+
+"My children leave me!" he exclaimed.
+
+"You must leave us or we must leave you," she said. "If I were your only
+child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate;
+but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and
+despair. I promised it to her who died there," she said, pointing to
+the place where her mother's bed had stood. "We have hidden our troubles
+from you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone. My father,
+we are not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it.
+Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be
+incessantly brought to nought by the caprices of a passion."
+
+"My dear children," cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite's hand, "I will
+help you, I will work, I--"
+
+"Here is the means," she answered, showing him the official letter.
+
+"But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose
+the fruits of ten years' work, and the enormous sums of money which my
+laboratory represents. There," he said, pointing towards the garret,
+"are our real resources."
+
+Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--
+
+"Father, you must choose."
+
+"Ah! my daughter, you are very hard," he replied, sitting down in an
+armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+
+The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple announcement
+turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old
+valet remarked hastily:--
+
+"Don't be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at
+eleven o'clock to breakfast. He didn't go to bed all night. At two in
+the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the
+window at the laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him; he
+wept; he is in trouble. Here's the famous month of July when the sun is
+able to enrich us all, and if you only would--"
+
+"Enough," said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed
+her father's mind.
+
+A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the
+places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his
+laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to
+him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to whom
+the public holidays are so much lost time. Here were his hopes; here the
+heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe
+the breath of life. This alliance of places and things with men, which
+is so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of
+science and students. To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce
+Science, to abandon the Problem,--it was death.
+
+Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in
+which her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the
+parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+
+At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite
+studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of
+stormy grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him
+good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her
+to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,--
+
+"I have been to get my passport."
+
+The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed
+the poor girl's heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears,
+and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at
+her ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man
+who had come to a decision.
+
+"So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle," he said to Monsieur Conyncks.
+"I have always wished to go there."
+
+"It is a place where one can live cheaply," replied the old man.
+
+"Is our father going away?" cried Felicie.
+
+Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+
+"You must leave him with me to-day," said Balthazar, putting his son
+beside him. "I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye."
+
+Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
+gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
+both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile.
+All instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
+declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
+Balthazar's age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm;
+he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the tyrannous
+power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening was over, and
+father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day
+had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the first years of his
+fatherhood, held out his hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness
+that was mingled with despair,--
+
+"Are you satisfied with your father?"
+
+"You are worthy of HIM," said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
+Van Claes.
+
+The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to
+the laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
+cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
+him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
+garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the
+various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded; each
+was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly ordered
+Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids, and to
+separate all substances which might produce explosions. While taking
+these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those uttered by
+a condemned man before going to the scaffold.
+
+"Here," he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
+a voltaic pile were dipped, "is an experiment whose results ought to be
+watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have driven
+from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their feet. In a
+combination of carbon and sulphur," he went on, speaking to himself,
+"carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--"
+
+"Ah! is that how it would be?" said Lemulquinier, contemplating his
+master with admiration.
+
+"Now here," continued Balthazar, after a pause, "the combination is
+subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act--"
+
+"If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force."
+
+"No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the
+conditions of crystallization--"
+
+"Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization," cried the old
+valet impatiently.
+
+"If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will crystallize,"
+said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of indistinct thoughts
+which were parts of a complete conception in his own mind; "but if the
+battery works under certain conditions of which I am ignorant--it must
+be watched carefully--it is quite possible that--Ah! what am I thinking
+of? It is no longer a question of chemistry, my friend; we are to keep
+accounts in Bretagne."
+
+Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur
+de Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science had
+imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the carriage
+with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the threshold.
+There, as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with a despairing
+pressure, he whispered in her ear, "You are a good girl; I bear you no
+ill-will"; then she darted through the court-yard into the parlor, and
+flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her mother had died, and
+prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish the hard task that lay
+before her. She was already strengthened by an inward voice, sounding in
+her heart the encouragement of angels and the gratitude of her mother,
+when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel, and Pierquin came in, after
+watching the carriage until it disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!" said Pierquin.
+
+"Save the family," she answered simply. "We own nearly thirteen hundred
+acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into three farms,
+put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I believe that in a
+few years, with patience and great economy, each of us," motioning to
+her sister and brother, "will have a farm of over four-hundred acres,
+which may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly fifteen thousand
+francs. My brother Gabriel will have this house, and all that now stands
+in his name on the Grand-Livre, for his portion. We shall then be able
+to redeem our father's property and return it to him free from all
+encumbrance, by devoting our incomes, each of us, to paying off his
+debts."
+
+"But, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite's
+understanding of business and her cool judgment, "you will need at least
+two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your houses, and
+purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?"
+
+"That is where my difficulties begin," she said, looking alternately at
+Pierquin and de Solis; "I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has already
+spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father's security."
+
+"You have friends!" cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+demoiselles Claes were "four-hundred-thousand-franc girls," after all.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin, unfortunately
+for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of his enthusiasm,
+and he promptly added,--
+
+"I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs."
+
+Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to
+find her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at her
+sister, who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the
+poor girl had allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin's meaningless
+gallantries.
+
+"You shall only pay me five per cent interest," went on the lawyer,
+"and refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take a
+mortgage on your property. And don't be uneasy; you shall only have the
+outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy farmers,
+and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like a good
+relation."
+
+Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too
+much occupied in studying the changes of her sister's face to perceive
+it. After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused smile,
+and answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de Solis:--
+
+"You are indeed a good relation,--I expected nothing less of you; but an
+interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall wait
+till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has in the
+Funds."
+
+Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+
+"Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+you," said Marguerite to her sister. "Jean, my angel, be a good boy;
+don't tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as
+many new ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard."
+
+Felicie carried off her brother.
+
+"Cousin," said Marguerite to Pierquin, "and you, monsieur," she said
+to Monsieur de Solis, "I know you have been to see my father during my
+absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let us
+understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both with
+the greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with Josette
+and Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one, not even
+an old friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the circumstances
+in which we are placed, our conduct must be irreproachable. We are vowed
+to toil and solitude for a long, long time."
+
+There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in contemplation
+of Marguerite's head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know what to say. He
+took leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against himself; for
+he suddenly perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and that he,
+Pierquin, had just behaved like a fool.
+
+"Pierquin, my friend," he said, apostrophizing himself in the street,
+"if a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool
+I am! I've got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business,
+without counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets, which
+is likely to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is so
+economical), and I've had the madness to ask interest from Mademoiselle
+Claes! I know those two are jeering at me now! I mustn't think of
+Marguerite any more. No. After all, Felicie is a sweet, gentle little
+creature, who will suit me much better. Marguerite's character is iron;
+she would want to rule me--and--she would rule me. Come, come, let's be
+generous; I wish I was not so much of a lawyer: am I never to get that
+harness off my back? Bless my soul! I'll begin to fall in love with
+Felicie, and I won't budge from that sentiment. She will have a farm
+of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner or later, will be worth
+twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for the soil about Waignies
+is excellent. Just let my old uncle des Racquets die, poor dear man,
+and I'll sell my practice and be a man of leisure, with
+fifty--thou--sand--francs--a--year. My wife is a Claes, I'm allied
+to the great families. The deuce! we'll see if those Courtevilles and
+Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come and dine with a
+Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of Douai; I'll obtain the
+cross, and get to be deputy--in short, everything. Ha, ha! Pierquin, my
+boy, now keep yourself in hand; no more nonsense, because--yes, on my
+word of honor--Felicie--Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes--loves you!"
+
+When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to
+Marguerite, who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They rose
+with one impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but as
+they reached the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist his
+joy, and, in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said,--
+
+"I have three hundred thousand francs of yours."
+
+"What!" she cried, "did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then
+where did you get them?"
+
+"Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who first
+said the word 'ourselves'?"
+
+"Dear Emmanuel!" she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held hers;
+and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself into a low
+chair.
+
+"It is for me to thank you," he said, with the voice of love, "since you
+accept all."
+
+"Oh, my dear beloved one," she cried, "this moment effaces many a grief
+and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune," she
+continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, "I know the way to
+make it mine."
+
+She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to witness.
+The young man's eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did not notice
+that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the words:--
+
+"From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father's
+indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself," she said, holding
+out the ring. "Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you--she would have
+chosen you."
+
+The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside her,
+offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+
+"This is my mother's wedding-ring," he said, kissing it. "My Marguerite,
+am I to have no other pledge than this?"
+
+She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+
+"Alas, dear love," she said, greatly agitated, "are we not doing wrong?
+We have so long to wait!"
+
+"My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of
+patience,--he spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you;
+I have long mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as
+I am His."
+
+They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm.
+It was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an
+overflowing spring, poured forth its superabundance in little wavelets.
+The events which separated these lovers produced a melancholy which only
+made their happiness the keener, giving it a sense of something sharp,
+like pain.
+
+Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact
+of love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,--exchanging
+a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this discretion cost
+him, how hungry his soul was for that happiness so long desired, which
+had just been consecrated by the betrothal of their hearts.
+
+"Come here, little sister," said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their words
+of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their projects. In
+spite of her sister's joyous tone and lively manner, Felicie experienced
+a sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite took her hand and felt
+it tremble.
+
+"Mademoiselle Felicie," said the elder, with her lips at her sister's
+ear. "I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence, and
+he has said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them." Felicie
+blushed. "Don't defend yourself, my angel," continued Marguerite, "it
+is so natural to love! Perhaps your dear nature will improve his; he is
+egotistical and self-interested, but for all that he is a good man, and
+his defects may even add to your happiness. He will love you as the best
+of his possessions; you will be a part of his business affairs. Forgive
+me this one word, dear love; you will soon correct the bad habit he has
+acquired of seeing money in everything, by teaching him the business of
+the heart."
+
+Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+
+"Besides," added Marguerite, "he has property; and his family belongs
+to the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don't think I would
+oppose your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do
+you?"
+
+Felicie let fall the words, "Dear sister."
+
+"Yes, you may confide in me," cried Marguerite, "sisters can surely tell
+each other their secrets."
+
+These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When Marguerite,
+expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie's
+heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--
+
+"Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--"
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, laughing, "leave me to my own devices; I have a
+model before my eyes."
+
+"Saucy child!" exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+
+Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
+accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
+and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
+both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the
+two were, to use his own expression, "romantic and sentimental girls,"
+adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
+Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
+no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream;
+and accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took
+her mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk
+sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of the primal contract which,
+according to social usage, must precede the notarial contract.
+
+"Dear cousin," he said, "you and I have not always been of one mind as
+to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
+you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
+desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
+fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
+me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
+have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
+that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
+successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
+that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
+brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
+take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
+service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at one
+quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I
+ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
+good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
+wife happy."
+
+"This is all satisfactory, cousin," answered Marguerite; "but my
+sister's choice depends upon herself and also on my father's will."
+
+"I know that, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, "but you are the mother
+of the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that you
+should judge me rightly."
+
+This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the
+note ran as follows: "Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor of
+the city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT of
+being present, etc."
+
+Marguerite accepted the lawyer's offer only so far as it related to his
+professional services, so that she might not in any degree compromise
+either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister's future, or her
+father's authority.
+
+The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette (who
+vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and seconded
+all her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where she began
+operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed by Pierquin.
+Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the mind of that
+worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an investment, and he
+had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he contrived to save
+Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and working the ground
+intended for the farms. He found three young men, sons of rich farmers,
+who were anxious to settle themselves in life, and he succeeded, through
+the prospect he held out to them of the fertility of the land, in making
+them take leases of the three farms on which the buildings were to be
+constructed. To gain possession of the farms rent-free for three years
+the tenants bound themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year the
+fourth year, twelve thousand the sixth year, and fifteen thousand for
+the remainder of the term; to drain the land, make the plantations, and
+purchase the cattle. While the buildings were being put up the farmers
+were to clear the land.
+
+Four years after Balthazar Claes's departure from his home Marguerite
+had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two
+hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put up
+the farm buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the brave
+girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town. Marguerite
+superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts and leases
+with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which women know so
+well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong sentiment. By the
+fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand francs from the rental
+of the farms, together with the income from the Funds standing in her
+brother's name, and the proceeds of her father's property, towards
+paying off the mortgages on that property, and repairing the devastation
+which her father's passion had wrought in the old mansion of the Claes.
+This redemption went on more rapidly as the interest account decreased.
+Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite to take the remaining one hundred
+thousand francs of his uncle's bequest, and by joining to it twenty
+thousand francs of his own savings, pay off in the third year of her
+management a large slice of the debts. This life of courage,
+privation, and endurance was never relaxed for five years; but all went
+well,--everything prospered under the administration and influence of
+Marguerite Claes.
+
+Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in
+the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by his
+great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover, he
+succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of her
+father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the whole
+Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had repaired
+its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar for the hand
+of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that of Marguerite.
+
+At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks left
+Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly desired
+by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might return to his
+family and crown their happiness by his presence. Marguerite had often
+expressed a regret at not being able to replace the pictures which had
+formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-rooms, before the day
+when her father would return as master of his house. In her absence
+Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with Felicie to prepare
+a surprise which should make the younger sister a sharer in the
+restoration of the House of Claes. The two bought a number of fine
+pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate the gallery.
+Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing. Wishing to testify to
+Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble conduct and in the
+self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her mother's dying mandate,
+he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures, among them several of
+those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should be brought to Douai
+in Marguerite's absence, so that the Claes gallery might once more be
+complete.
+
+During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her
+sister or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed;
+but since her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming
+symptoms, the gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony with
+which he lived that he might spend the greater part of his salary in
+experiments the results of which forever disappointed him. Though he was
+only sixty-five years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His eyes were
+sunken in their orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a few hairs
+remained as a fringe around his skull; he allowed his beard to grow, and
+cut it off with scissors when its length annoyed him; he was bent like a
+field-laborer, and the condition of his clothes had reached a degree of
+wretchedness which his decrepitude now rendered hideous. Thought still
+animated that noble face, whose features were scarcely discernible
+under its wrinkles; but the fixity of the eyes, a certain desperation
+of manner, a restless uneasiness, were all diagnostics of insanity, or
+rather of many forms of insanity. Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the
+look of a monomaniac; at other times impatient anger at not seizing a
+secret which flitted before his eyes like a will o' the wisp brought
+symptoms of madness into his face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter
+betrayed his irrationality: but during the greater part of the time, he
+was sunk in a state of complete depression which combined all the phases
+of insanity in the cold melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and
+imperceptible these symptoms may have been to the eye of strangers, they
+were, unfortunately, only too plain to those who had known Balthazar
+Claes sublime in goodness, noble in heart, stately in person,--a Claes
+of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige now remained.
+
+Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant
+toil, had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+expression of the old valet's face showed a singular mixture of
+anxiety and admiration for his master which might easily have misled
+an onlooker. Though he listened to Balthazar's words with respect, and
+followed his every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of
+the servant of science very much as a mother takes care of her child,
+and even seemed to protect him, because in the vulgar details of life,
+to which Balthazar gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These
+old men, wrapped in one idea, confident of the reality of their hope,
+stirred by the same breath, the one representing the shell, the other
+the soul of their mutual existence, formed a spectacle at once tender
+and distressing.
+
+When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living
+at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+possession of his office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his native
+town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar's mind. His daughter's
+letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed of crowning
+his career by a series of experiments that must lead to the solution
+of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite's arrival with extreme
+impatience.
+
+The daughter threw herself into her father's arms and wept for joy. This
+time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon for the
+exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself criminal, like
+those great men who violate the liberties of the people for the safety
+of the nation. But she shuddered as she now contemplated her father
+and saw the change which had taken place in him since her last visit.
+Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of his niece, and insisted on
+taking Balthazar as soon as possible to Douai, where the influence
+of his native place might restore him to health and reason amid the
+happiness of a recovered domestic life.
+
+After the first transports of the heart were over,--which were far
+warmer on Balthazar's part than Marguerite had expected,--he showed a
+singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+
+Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for
+a time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had
+dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and
+the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and
+childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations. His
+daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the energy
+she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take away from
+him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable feelings that
+had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had abdicated a paternity
+he had long neglected,--all these things affected his mind towards her,
+and increased her importance in his eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him
+beside Marguerite; he saw only his daughter, he thought only of her, and
+seemed to fear her, as certain weak husbands fear a superior woman
+who rules them. When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite
+noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child
+detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic
+and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by
+toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips
+and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that
+greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence
+to restore her father's sense of dignity before the solemn day on which
+he was to reappear in the bosom of his family. Her first step when they
+were alone was to ask him,--
+
+"Do you owe anything here?"
+
+Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:--
+
+"I don't know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+more about my affairs than I do myself."
+
+Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+
+"What does monsieur want?" asked Lemulquinier.
+
+Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her
+heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that some
+mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the companion
+of his labors.
+
+"My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+without you," she said.
+
+"Monsieur," began Lemulquinier, "owes--"
+
+At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+intercepted; it humiliated her.
+
+"Tell me all that my father owes," she said.
+
+"Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who
+is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and
+lead, and zinc and the reagents--"
+
+"Is that all?" asked Marguerite.
+
+Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under a
+spell,--
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle."
+
+"Very good," she said, "I will give them to you."
+
+Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,--
+
+"You are an angel, my child."
+
+He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less sad;
+and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily detected the
+signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain that the three
+thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of his laboratory.
+
+"Be frank with me, father," she said, letting him seat her on his knee;
+"you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home without
+an element of fear in the midst of the general joy."
+
+"My dear Marguerite," he said, taking her hands and kissing them with a
+grace that seemed a memory of her youth, "you would scold me--"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Truly?" he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. "Can I
+tell you all? will you pay--"
+
+"Yes," she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+
+"Well, I owe--oh! I dare not--"
+
+"Tell me, father."
+
+"It is a great deal."
+
+She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+
+"I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville."
+
+"Thirty thousand francs," she said, "is just the sum I have laid by. I
+am glad to give it to you," she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+
+He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the
+chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:--
+
+"My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the
+Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were about
+to sue me,--me, who would have made their fortune!"
+
+"Father," said Marguerite in accents of despair, "are you still
+searching?"
+
+"Yes, still searching," he said, with the smile of a madman, "and I
+shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached--"
+
+"We? who are we?"
+
+"I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he
+is devoted to me."
+
+Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+should lower himself in her uncle's eyes. She was frightened at the
+ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for
+the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who
+saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize the
+liberation of his fortune.
+
+On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and
+her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy
+over his master such as common men without education are able to obtain
+over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such men,
+taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete
+dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case
+the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows
+out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab
+for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of
+this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating yoke
+if it were real.
+
+They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable Marguerite
+to pay off her father's debts and request the manufacturers of chemical
+products to send nothing to Douai without first informing her of any
+orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change his style of
+dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his station. This
+corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical dignity which
+augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite, joyous in the
+thought of all the surprises that awaited her father when he entered his
+own house, started for Douai.
+
+Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the
+nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily
+diverted the chemist's mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of
+his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the joyous
+company of his family and friends gathering about him his emotion was
+so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice trembled, his eyelids
+reddened, and he held his children in so passionate an embrace, seeming
+unable to release them, that the spectators of the scene were moved to
+tears.
+
+When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from
+the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of the
+court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest details
+with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he drew
+himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The tears
+came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the care
+with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra that he
+formerly had sold,--a visible sign that all the other disasters had been
+repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room, whose sideboards and
+shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware not less valuable than
+the treasures that formerly stood there. Though the family meal lasted
+a long time, it was still too short for the narratives which Balthazar
+exacted from each of his children. The reaction of his moral being
+caused by this return to his home wedded him once more to family
+happiness, and he was again a father. His manners recovered their former
+dignity. At first the delight of recovering possession kept him from
+dwelling on the means by which the recovery had been brought about. His
+joy therefore was full and unalloyed.
+
+Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into
+the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal
+papers which the notary's clerk had laid upon a table, by which he
+was standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and
+Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+
+"This," said Pierquin, "is the guardianship account which Monsieur Claes
+renders to his children. It is not very amusing," he added, laughing
+after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively tone in
+speaking of serious matters, "but I must really oblige you to listen to
+it."
+
+Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a
+reproach, and his brow clouded.
+
+The clerk began the reading. Balthazar's amazement increased as little
+by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the
+fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have been
+sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing up of
+the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was intact and
+as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had controlled it. In
+consequence of this the House of Claes was free from all lien, Balthazar
+was master of it; moreover, his rural property was likewise released
+from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with these matters were
+signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the repayment of the moneys
+formerly borrowed, and releases of the various liens on the estates.
+
+Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood,
+the life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and
+looked about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of
+her sex, had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to
+see that all the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared. Each
+member of the family understood the old man's wish when the failing
+humid eyes sought for the daughter,--who was seen by all present, with
+the eyes of the soul, as an angel of strength and light within the
+house. Gabriel went to find her. Hearing her step, Balthazar ran to
+clasp her in his arms.
+
+"Father," she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man caught
+her and strained her to his breast, "I implore you not to lessen your
+sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying out your
+wishes, and be the sole author of the good that has been done here."
+
+Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter, folded
+his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face recovered an
+expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long years,--
+
+"Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!"
+
+He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went
+back to the parlor.
+
+"My children," he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former
+days had made him so imposing, "we all owe gratitude and thanks to
+my daughter Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has
+fulfilled my intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed
+by my labors, gave the reins of our domestic government into her hands."
+
+"Ah, now!" cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, "we must read the
+marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids
+me to draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur
+Raparlier is coming."
+
+The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+Claes's return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The company
+quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the quality
+of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes. The three
+families, thus united through the happiness of their children, seemed to
+vie with each other in contributing to the splendor of the occasion. The
+parlor was soon filled with the charming gifts that are made to bridal
+couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere
+shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave
+as to those who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone
+on every face, and the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost
+sight of by the spectators,--who often busy themselves in estimating it
+out of curiosity.
+
+The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated,
+all present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the
+parlor on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next
+to them stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on, Felicie
+and Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only persons who were
+seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who, for this occasion,
+had taken Pierquin's duty. Jean stood behind his father. A score of
+ladies elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from among the nearest
+relatives of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the Claes, the mayor of
+Douai, who was to marry the couples, the twelve witnesses chosen from
+among the nearest friends of the three families, all, even the curate of
+Saint-Pierre, remained standing and formed an imposing circle at the
+end of the parlor next the court-yard. This homage paid by the whole
+assembly to Paternity, which at such a moment shines with almost regal
+majesty, gave to the scene a certain antique character. It was the only
+moment for sixteen long years when Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+
+Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if all
+the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived; on
+receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took up
+the marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis, which
+was the first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor opened
+and Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" he cried.
+
+Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a
+sign, he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious of
+a shock.
+
+"I dared not tell you, my child," said the father, "but since you
+have done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+Lemulquinier lent me all his savings--the fruit of twenty years'
+economy--for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah! my
+angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled me
+in my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,--without him I should have
+died."
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" cried Lemulquinier.
+
+"What is it?" said Balthazar, turning round.
+
+"A diamond!"
+
+Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+valet, who whispered in his ear,--
+
+"I have been to the laboratory."
+
+The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on
+the old Fleming which meant, "You went before me to the laboratory!"
+
+"Yes," continued Lemulquinier, "I found the diamond in the china capsule
+which communicated with the battery which we left to work, monsieur--and
+see!" he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral form, whose
+brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+
+"My children, my friends," said Balthazar, "forgive my old servant,
+forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven years
+has produced--without me--a discovery I have sought for sixteen years.
+How? My God, I know not--yes, I left sulphide of carbon under the
+influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been watched
+from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked in my
+laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects! Is it
+not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched that
+slow, that sudden--what can I call it?--crystallization, transformation,
+in short that miracle, then, then my children would have been richer
+still. Though this result is not the solution of the Problem which I
+seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from that diamond upon
+my native country, and this hour, which our satisfied affections have
+made so happy, would have glowed with the sunlight of Science."
+
+Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be sublime.
+
+Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected
+the souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite,
+saying,--
+
+"It is thine, my angel."
+
+Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the
+notary, saying, "Go on."
+
+The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as
+Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he
+reseated himself, said in a low voice,--
+
+"To-day I must be a father only."
+
+Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and
+kissed it respectfully.
+
+"No man was ever greater," said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to
+him; "no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad."
+
+After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened
+to question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been
+formed; but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident. He
+looked through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an angry
+gesture.
+
+"Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which no
+doubt produces metals, diamonds," he said, "was manifested there for one
+moment, by one chance."
+
+"That chance was of course some natural effect," whispered a guest
+belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation
+of everything. "At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has
+wasted."
+
+"Let us forget it," said Balthazar, addressing his friends; "I beg you
+to say no more about it to-day."
+
+Marguerite took her father's arm to lead the way to the reception-rooms
+of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As he
+entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled with
+pictures and garnished with choice flowers.
+
+"Pictures!" he exclaimed, "pictures!--and some of the old ones!"
+
+He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him; he
+felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation came
+before his eyes.
+
+"It is all your own, father," said Marguerite, guessing the feelings
+that oppressed his soul.
+
+"Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise," he cried, "how
+many times have you given life to your father?"
+
+"Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+heart," she said, "and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by nearly
+sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give them
+to Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be made
+comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us. Monsieur
+de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,--a life without
+luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you are able to
+return it."
+
+"Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father's
+providence."
+
+When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored and
+furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently descended
+to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand staircase, on every
+step of which were rare plants and flowering shrubs. A silver service of
+exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel to his father, attracted all
+eyes to a luxury which was surprising to the inhabitants of a town where
+such luxury is traditional. The servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of
+Pierquin, as well as those of the Claes household, were assembled to
+serve the repast. Seeing himself once more at the head of that table,
+surrounded by friends and relatives and happy faces beaming with
+heartfelt joy, Balthazar, behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was
+overcome by emotions so deep and so imposing that all present kept
+silence, as men are silent before great sorrows or great joys.
+
+"Dear children," he cried, "you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+home the prodigal father."
+
+These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however,
+and the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character of
+a family fete.
+
+Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to
+arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic splendor
+of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed this happy
+day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and dinners, which
+involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of social life. His
+eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near Cambrai belonging
+to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate from his daughter.
+Madame Pierquin also left her father's house to do the honors of a fine
+mansion which Pierquin had built, and where he desired to live in
+all the dignity of rank; for his practise was sold, and his uncle des
+Racquets had died and left him a large property scraped together by slow
+economy. Jean went to Paris to finish his education, and Monsieur and
+Madame de Solis alone remained with their father in the House de Claes.
+Balthazar made over to them the family home in the rear house, and took
+up his own abode on the second floor of the front building.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father's material comfort,
+aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from
+the hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that
+happiness entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever
+afforded a better illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless
+felicity which all women cherish in their dreams. The union of two
+beings so courageous in the trials of life, who had loved each other
+through years with so sacred an affection, drew forth the respectful
+admiration of the whole community. Monsieur de Solis, who had long held
+an appointment as inspector-general of the University, resigned those
+functions to enjoy his happiness more freely, and remained at Douai
+where every one did such homage to his character and attainments that
+his name was proposed as candidate for the Electoral college whenever
+he should reach the required age. Marguerite, who had shown herself so
+strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet and tender woman.
+
+Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and yet,
+though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his ordinary
+income sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory. Marguerite
+restored all the old customs of the House of Claes, and gave a family
+fete every month in honor of her father, at which the Pierquins and the
+Conyncks were present; and she also received the upper ranks of
+society one day in the week at a "cafe" which became celebrated. Though
+frequently absent-minded, Claes took part in all these assemblages and
+became, to please his daughter, so willingly a man of the world that the
+family were able to believe he had renounced his search for the solution
+of the great problem.
+
+Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis to
+Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself
+and the inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age,
+barrenness, and other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the last
+lineal descendant of the family and heir to the titles and estates of
+his ancient house. Moreover, by one of those curious chances which
+seem impossible except in a book, the house of Solis had acquired the
+territory and titles of the Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite did not wish
+to separate from her husband, who was to stay in Spain long enough to
+settle his affairs, and she was, moreover, curious to see the castle
+of Casa-Real where her mother had passed her childhood, and the city of
+Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. She left Douai, consigning
+the care of the house to Martha, Josette, and Lemulquinier. Balthazar,
+to whom Marguerite had proposed a journey into Spain, declined to
+accompany her on the ground of his advanced age; but certain experiments
+which he had long meditated, and to which he now trusted for the
+realization of his hopes were the real reason of his refusal.
+
+The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until the
+middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for Italy
+on their way back to France. There, however, they received a letter from
+Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months, their father
+had completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were obliged to
+pay Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries of the
+household. The old valet had again sacrificed his little property to his
+master. Balthazar was no longer willing to see any one, and would not
+even admit his children to the house. Martha and Josette were dead. The
+coachman, the cook, and the other servants had long been dismissed;
+the horses and carriages were sold. Though Lemulquinier maintained the
+utmost secrecy as to his master's proceedings, it was believed that the
+thousand francs supplied by Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly
+on experiments. The small amount of provisions which the old valet
+purchased in the town seemed to show that the two old men contented
+themselves with the barest necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House
+of Claes, Gabriel and Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums
+which their father had again borrowed on it. None of his children had
+the slightest influence upon the old man, who at seventy years of age
+displayed extraordinary energy in bending everything to his will,
+even in matters that were trivial. Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had
+decided not to pay off his debts.
+
+This letter changed all Marguerite's travelling plans, and she
+immediately took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her
+past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar's debts; but she wished
+to do more, she wished to obey her mother's last injunction and save him
+from sinking dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise enough
+ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the work
+of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from his
+enfeebled faculties. But she was also anxious to control him without
+wounding his susceptibilities,--not wishing to imitate the children of
+Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result for which he
+had sacrificed so much.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which
+they found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A
+shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the
+noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight
+of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed
+also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that house on
+Marguerite's return to it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis's
+valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that Monsieur
+Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.
+
+Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,--glad to escape a
+scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to
+admit her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and
+prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to
+notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+
+When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor. Horror
+overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a
+fire had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum
+and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-room was
+empty: there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal
+table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two
+forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his
+servant had evidently just eaten. In a moment she had flown through her
+father's portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same
+desolation as the parlor and dining-room. The idea of the Alkahest had
+swept like a conflagration through the building. Her father's bedroom
+had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter
+candlestick with a tallow candle burned almost to the socket. The house
+was so completely stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at
+the windows. Every object of the smallest value,--everything, even the
+kitchen utensils, had been sold.
+
+Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
+in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber and
+found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer
+she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's watch which he had
+pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled
+with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her
+own appartement and ordered the door to be broken open--her father had
+respected it!
+
+Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
+of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
+feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
+tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
+climax, brought about in Marguerite's soul one of those moral reactions
+against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the
+parlor to wait her father's arrival, in a state of anxiety that was
+cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she
+about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts
+his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears
+flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the desecrated
+sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts, her useless
+precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,--all, even her
+little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all were parts of a
+poem of unutterable melancholy.
+
+Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
+the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at once
+so grand and yet so miserable.
+
+The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
+eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
+who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
+philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
+this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated his
+purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up to
+him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are
+uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
+genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate
+in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and "tutti quanti." The
+people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of
+genius.
+
+These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from
+the bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity among
+persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,--two
+sentiments big with contempt and with the "vae victis" with which the
+masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune. Persons
+often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the rose
+window of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been
+consumed in smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they pointed
+to him with their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a mocking
+jest or a word of pity would escape the lips of a working-man or some
+mere child. But Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it was
+homage; he could deceive him with impunity, for though the old man's
+eyes retained the sublime clearness which results from the habit of
+living among great thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+
+To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+common consent "the House of Claes," was now called in the suburbs and
+the country districts "the Devil's House." Every outward sign, even the
+face of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were current
+about Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to purchase the few
+provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking out the cheapest
+he could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,--just as butchers
+slip bones into their customers' meat,--and he was fortunate, poor
+creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not refuse to sell him
+his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact with an imp of hell.
+
+Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand
+old man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes added
+to this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have seen
+better days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are ashamed
+to beg. It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would be insulted
+in the streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the family any public
+insult would be, had for some time past sent two or three of his own
+servants to follow the old man whenever he went out, and keep him
+in sight at a little distance, for the purpose of protecting him if
+necessary,--the revolution of July not having contributed to make the
+citizens respectful.
+
+By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the secret
+guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back from
+the ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the place
+Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to school.
+Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men, whose faces
+brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys began to
+talk of them. Generally, children's chatter ends in laughter; on this
+occasion the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know the
+cruelty. Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little distance,
+and examined the strange old faces with smothered laughter and remarks
+which attracted Lemulquinier's attention.
+
+"Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, he was born a Wise Man."
+
+"My papa says he makes gold," said another.
+
+The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and was
+devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and said
+boldly to Lemulquinier,--
+
+"Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?"
+
+"Yes, my little man," replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on the
+cheek; "we will give you some of you study well."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, give me some, too," was the general exclamation.
+
+The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the
+old men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by
+these sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general
+shout of laughter.
+
+"Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man," said Lemulquinier.
+
+"Hi, the old harlequin!" cried the lads; "the old sorcerer! you are
+sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!"
+
+Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his cane;
+they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A workman
+who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier brandish his
+cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them, and took their
+part, crying out,--
+
+"Down with the sorcerers!"
+
+The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the
+old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin's servants,
+appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
+however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud.
+The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
+chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
+that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon
+of introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body
+could not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings,
+and he fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who
+brought him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and
+their servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from
+following the body of the old man to the door of his house, where
+Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister
+had sent for, were waiting to receive him.
+
+The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
+less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing
+that his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of
+his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every
+care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening,
+allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though
+skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood;
+and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially
+affected, perhaps because the old man's anger had concentrated all
+his forces upon it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the
+children.
+
+This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
+law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
+this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
+more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
+that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
+his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
+to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
+late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
+the matter might be allowed to drop.
+
+Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
+tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
+At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her
+he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He
+was able to press his daughter's hand with his cold fingers, putting
+into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had
+the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell
+of the brain which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived.
+Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the
+gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his
+memory, this giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded
+him with respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images
+of plenty and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family.
+His every look--by which alone he could manifest his feelings--was
+unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
+that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.
+
+Marguerite paid her father's debts, and restored a modern splendor to
+the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
+left the old man's bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
+accomplish his slightest wish.
+
+Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
+the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
+listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his
+bed.
+
+Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
+critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned
+by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took
+place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to
+watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward
+convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last agony.
+
+The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
+sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
+an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
+out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his
+bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death
+made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual
+satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by
+the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading
+might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently
+struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, "DISCOVERY OF THE
+ABSOLUTE,"--which startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite
+concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the
+secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a low voice, and
+Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar heard it.
+
+Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
+illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
+rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered
+with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, "EUREKA!"--I have
+found.
+
+He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
+died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
+last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
+Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!--by
+the fleshless fingers of Death.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+
+     Casa-Real, Duc de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+
+     Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Protez and Chiffreville
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Cesar Birotteau
+
+     Savaron de Savarus
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+     Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+       The Quest of the Absolute
+       Albert Savarus
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: The Alkahest
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: June 6, 2004 [EBook #1453]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALKAHEST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+                             THE ALKAHEST
+                                  BY
+                           HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+
+                            Translated By
+                     Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say--May God grant it!
+
+DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE ALKAHEST
+                         (THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I
+
+There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than
+those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish
+buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs
+of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well,
+in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such
+didactic preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain
+ignorant and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing
+the generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
+gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
+
+The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so
+closely allied to architecture that the majority of observers can
+reconstruct nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life,
+from the remains of public monuments or the relics of a home.
+Archaeology is to social nature what comparative anatomy is to
+organized nature. A mosaic tells the tale of a society, as the
+skeleton of an ichthyosaurus opens up a creative epoch. All things are
+linked together, and all are therefore deducible. Causes suggest
+effects, effects lead back to causes. Science resuscitates even the
+warts of the past ages.
+
+Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
+provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential
+facts. The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the
+past; and to man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him
+what has been, and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is
+rare indeed that the picture of a locality where lives are lived does
+not recall to some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith.
+The comparison between a present which disappoints man's secret wishes
+and a future which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of
+sadness or of placid content.
+
+Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
+Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
+conclusion to man's uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
+family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
+comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
+beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
+sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
+Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life of
+feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
+nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
+superficial minds deny the heart's existence. The crowd prefers the
+abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
+persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
+immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity.
+Therefore, to impress this multitude carried away on the current of
+existence, passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the
+mark, to exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello,
+Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds
+alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy represented
+by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The
+life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions
+of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average
+citizen.
+
+A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the
+old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies no
+weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan
+"far-niente." Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
+essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
+creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
+lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
+first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make
+the manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as
+cold as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has
+brought her power to bear, and has modified all things, even the
+effects of climate. If we observe attentively the productions of
+various parts of the globe, we are surprised to find that the
+prevailing tints from the temperate zones are gray or fawn, while the
+more brilliant colors belong to the products of the hotter climates.
+The manners and customs of a country must naturally conform to this
+law of nature.
+
+Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
+monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
+atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
+the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it
+into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
+acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries
+of vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In
+exchange for its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that
+fairy glass-ware in which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From
+Austria it learned the ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular
+saying, takes three steps backward to one forward; while its trade
+with India poured into it the grotesque designs of China and the
+marvels of Japan.
+
+And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of
+all things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general
+storehouse of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco
+brought into one smoky outline the scattered features of its national
+physiognomy. Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of
+their territory, the Flemings became a people homogeneous through
+their pipes and beer.[*]
+
+[*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+
+After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
+products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country
+of Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for
+itself an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs
+which bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its
+ideality and produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic
+grace, the swing of comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the
+bold flight of ode and epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile
+in discoveries, and trained to scientific discussions which demand
+time and the midnight oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal
+enjoyment. There men look exclusively to the thing that is: their
+thoughts are so scrupulously bent on supplying the wants of this life
+that they have never risen, in any direction, above the level of this
+present earth. The sole idea they have ever conceived of the future is
+that of a thrifty, prosaic statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came
+from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
+table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
+porches.
+
+The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
+comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
+craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
+compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
+on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
+the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
+houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
+monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and
+that of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient
+industry, are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked
+to show in human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could
+do no better than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster,
+capable, as was proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way,
+and without the incitements of glory, for the welfare of his
+Free-town.
+
+Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
+which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
+ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one
+of the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of
+Flemish life.
+
+Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
+and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
+buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of a
+venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
+fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
+left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality,
+its traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of
+Holland. Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick
+buildings, and the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding
+before the capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
+
+The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
+the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
+than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
+one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
+production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
+never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
+were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
+of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
+to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
+compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound
+to share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children,
+and property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The
+syndic's forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who
+were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though
+he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+
+The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
+execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions
+in the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of
+martyrs gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who
+punished revolt through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre
+over Douai, the Claes preserved their great wealth by allying
+themselves in marriage with the very noble family of Molina, whose
+elder branch, then poor, thus became rich enough to buy the county of
+Nourho which they had long held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
+are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
+represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
+Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
+the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
+over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
+francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
+the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a
+fortune. As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in
+litigation between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family
+which remained in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and
+assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a
+legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to
+the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights were
+instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his Spanish
+nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
+
+The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families
+exiled under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth
+century, the Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and
+traditions of their ancestors. They married into none but the purest
+burgher families, and required a certain number of aldermen and
+burgomasters in the pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her
+to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
+in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
+perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
+and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
+mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
+nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
+gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
+life.
+
+The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that
+was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty
+of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made
+them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,
+--the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in
+that mansion, which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a
+type of the modest houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle
+Ages constructed for their homes.
+
+The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre
+of which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of
+the doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed
+arch bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a
+statuette of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left
+its mark upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the
+extreme care taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the
+passers-by to note all its details.
+
+The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white
+stone ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above
+the window in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a
+cross, which divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the
+transversal bar, placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made
+the lower sashes of the window nearly double the height of the upper,
+the latter rounding at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch
+was ornamented with three rows of brick, placed one above the other,
+the bricks alternately projecting or retreating to the depth of an
+inch, giving the effect of a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which
+were small and diamond-shaped, were set in very slender leading,
+painted red. The walls of the house, of brick jointed with white
+mortar, were braced at regular distances, and at the angles of the
+house, by stone courses.
+
+The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
+while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
+a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle
+threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something
+like steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where
+the rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the
+jaws of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a
+step at the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance,
+between the two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands,
+through which the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient
+usages.
+
+From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
+cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
+the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
+were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre.
+The front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the
+deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well
+preserved as a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an
+amateur, which would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our
+climate and the effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our
+own health.
+
+The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
+the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
+eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
+moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
+the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the
+red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
+immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing,
+gave the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which
+would have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he
+happened to take lodgings over the way.
+
+When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
+from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
+coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the
+double-door in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the
+door escaped from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a
+solemn, ponderous sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved
+archway and through the depths of the house, as though the door had
+been of iron. This archway, painted to resemble marble, always clean
+and daily sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved
+with smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the
+linen-rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
+coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
+decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
+its way between four red walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy
+tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic
+appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
+
+A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the
+court-yard, and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first
+room on the ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the
+court-yard, and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same
+size as the house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each
+other, led at one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the
+court-yard, and were in line with the archway and the street door; so
+that a visitor entering the latter could see through to the greenery
+which draped the lower end of the garden. The front building, which
+was reserved for receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many
+objects of art and accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in
+the eyes of a Claes, nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the
+treasures contained in the parlor, where for over two centuries the
+family life had glided on.
+
+The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
+days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
+say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
+the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,
+--this Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of
+Bruges. The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich
+craftsman. Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van
+Huysum, grown rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a
+wall-decoration in ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of
+Van Artevelde,--that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of
+Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty
+panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was
+held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard
+the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his
+native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if
+he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had already
+despatched it to Douai.
+
+The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving,
+which Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr's memory, came to Douai
+to frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is
+therefore the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings
+now sell for nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place,
+Van Claes the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of
+the Court of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who
+venerated him as their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in
+stone with a very high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble
+during the last century; on it now stood an old clock and two
+candlesticks with five twisted branches, in bad taste, but of solid
+silver. The four windows were draped by wide curtains of red damask
+with a flowered black design, lined with white silk; the furniture,
+covered with the same material, had been renovated in the time of
+Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large squares of
+white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many
+oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
+had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native
+Dutch oak.
+
+In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
+stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
+symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
+stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
+with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
+silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and
+sombre. The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none.
+Although on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the
+sunshine danced upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard
+admitted so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli
+scarcely glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be
+gorgeous on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled
+with soft shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the
+sun on the tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+
+It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes,
+in other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at
+present, it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II
+
+Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+looking out upon the garden. The sun's rays fell obliquely upon the
+house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
+carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson
+halo projected through the damask curtains which draped the window.
+Even an ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this
+particular moment, would assuredly have produced a striking picture of
+a head that was full of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body,
+and that of the feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration
+of one who loses consciousness of physical being in the concentration
+of powers absorbed in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in
+the far future, just as sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at
+a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line
+to the horizon.
+
+The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
+and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions.
+A dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
+as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
+folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
+light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show in
+preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
+impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
+expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
+that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most
+thoughtless mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive
+grief that is rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left
+on this woman's face like lava congealed about a crater. She might
+have been a dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal
+depths of wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human
+protector.
+
+The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
+nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
+the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
+heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead,
+very prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but
+beneath it sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting
+flames. Her face, altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color
+and pitted by the small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its
+oval, whose outline, though slightly impaired by time, preserved a
+finished elegance and dignity, and regained at times its full
+perfection when some effort of the soul restored its pristine purity.
+The most noticeable feature in this strong face was the nose, aquiline
+as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply curved at the middle as to
+give the idea of an interior malformation; yet there was an air of
+indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition between the
+nostrils was so thin that a rosy light shone through it. Though the
+lips, which were large and curved, betrayed the pride of noble birth,
+their expression was one of kindliness and natural courtesy.
+
+The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
+questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
+and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the
+world obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there
+were men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face
+and its tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm
+that was seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+
+She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in
+earlier days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of
+poesy now emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any
+former period of her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void,
+and expressing a nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though
+it was at the same time powerless over destiny.
+
+When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
+the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
+to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
+God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
+the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
+hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
+moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing
+to serve the dinner.
+
+At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her
+abstraction and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped
+away her tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the
+expression of pain that was stamped on every feature that she
+presently seemed in the state of happy indifference which comes with a
+life exempt from care. Whether it were that the habit of living in
+this house to which infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive
+certain natural effects that are imperceptible to the senses of
+others, but which persons under the influence of excessive feeling are
+keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation for her physical
+defects, had given her more delicate sensations than better organized
+beings,--it is certain that this woman had heard the steps of a man in
+a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants' hall, by which
+the front house communicated with the "back-quarter." The steps grew
+more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent
+creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
+would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led
+down from the gallery to the parlor.
+
+The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being
+into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate,
+headlong step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries,
+"Fire!" his feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a
+contrary gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow
+approach, the dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an
+unreflecting spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would
+undoubtedly have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread
+of feet that seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked
+loudly, as though two iron weights were striking them alternately. The
+mind recognized at once either the heavy, undecided step of an old man
+or the majestic tread of a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
+
+When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
+upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
+still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
+servants' hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door
+concealed in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading
+from the parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder,
+like the sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated
+in the armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face,
+moved by the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian
+Madonna. She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into
+the depths of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the
+wall which she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now
+pushed in with such brusque violence that the poor woman herself
+seemed jarred by the shock.
+
+Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
+look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
+erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
+right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom
+herself, although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her
+smile, contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting
+that line which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so
+deeply; her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she
+looked at Balthazar.
+
+It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the
+family of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family
+martyr who had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but
+as he stood there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age,
+though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the
+honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because
+his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the
+spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad
+chest and square shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank
+and wasted, though nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical
+organization evidently once perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored
+to explain this anomalous figure by some possible singularities of the
+man's life.
+
+His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
+Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain
+protuberances which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and
+full blue eyes had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in
+searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life,
+was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened
+wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The
+cheek-bones were very prominent, which made the cheeks themselves,
+already withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full of sweetness, was
+squeezed in between the nose and a short chin, which projected sharply.
+The shape of the face, however, was long rather than oval, and the
+scientific doctrine which sees in every human face a likeness to an
+animal would have found its confirmation in that of Balthazar Claes,
+which bore a strong resemblance to a horse's head. The skin clung
+closely to the bones, as though some inward fire were incessantly
+drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space, as if to see
+the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
+that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+
+The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
+face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that
+of an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye,
+whose fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and
+by the inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes
+seemed to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the
+terrible reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The
+zealous fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this
+man; it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his
+mind expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with
+the anomalous peculiarities of his person.
+
+His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very
+long, had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not
+cleaned and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish
+household, the master alone took the strange liberty of being
+slovenly. His black cloth trousers were covered with stains, his
+waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at
+the seams,--completing an array of signs, great and small, which in
+any other man would have betokened a poverty begotten of vice, but
+which in Balthazar Claes was the negligence of genius.
+
+Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
+the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
+and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
+than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for
+vices than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The
+profits accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote
+that the social world fears to square accounts with the man of
+learning in his lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by
+not forgiving his misfortunes or his poverty.
+
+If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present,
+Balthazar Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some
+sweet and companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful
+countenance, if the fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone
+with feeling, if he had ever looked humanly about him and returned to
+the real life of common things, it would indeed have been difficult
+not to do involuntary homage to the winning beauty of his face and the
+gracious soul that would then have shone from it. As it was, all who
+looked at him regretted that the man belonged no more to the world at
+large, and said to one another: "He must have been very handsome in
+his youth." A vulgar error! Never was Balthazar Claes's appearance
+more poetic than at this moment. Lavater, had he seen him, would fain
+have studied that head so full of patience, of Flemish loyalty, and
+pure morality,--where all was broad and noble, and passion seemed calm
+because it was strong.
+
+The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
+sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
+complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
+service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
+elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household, to
+manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
+living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
+with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
+the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
+enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+
+At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes
+that he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the
+woman who was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect,
+or nobility of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either
+they dress simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they
+make others forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which
+diverts the eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess
+a noble soul, but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the
+woman which gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up
+in one of the most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have
+learned good taste had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the
+desire of constantly pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to
+clothe herself admirably, and without producing incongruity between
+her elegance and the defects of her conformation. The bust, however,
+was defective in the shoulders only, one of which was noticeably much
+larger than the other.
+
+She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
+garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
+said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman's
+submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
+the pride of her Spanish nature:--
+
+"Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday
+since you have been to mass or vespers."
+
+Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands, and
+waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
+indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of
+those beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all
+their youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal
+to wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of
+physical disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a
+word, suffices to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel
+because it contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our
+nature leads us to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than
+pleasure coming in the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
+
+Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him,
+and said,--
+
+"Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers."
+
+He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
+magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
+short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
+
+"Why should they not combine within a given time?"
+
+"Is he going mad?" thought the wife, much terrified.
+
+To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
+by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to
+glance back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter
+of the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
+came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
+manners in the society of Madame d'Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince of
+Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
+originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or
+wealth won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time
+gave the tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and
+friends ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment
+when that world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at
+first more attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of
+life. He frequented the society of scientific men, particularly
+Lavoisier, who at that time was better known to the world for his
+enormous fortune as a "fermier-general" than for his discoveries in
+chemistry,--though later the great chemist was to eclipse the man of
+wealth.
+
+Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated, and
+became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
+Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
+and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
+that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
+those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
+finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
+society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+
+The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
+his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so
+tender, which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far
+more fitted to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No
+gilded Parisian salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the
+panelled parlor and the little garden where his happy childhood had
+slipped away. A man must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,
+--Paris, the city of cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and
+clasp her with the arms of Science, Art, or Power.
+
+The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine's pigeon to
+its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
+Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
+of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
+had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar's father and mother
+had left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for
+a time in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to
+marry; he needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect
+had fastened upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of
+seeking a wife in Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened
+that no woman whom he met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had
+certain peculiar ideas as to marriage; from his youth he had been
+accused of never following the beaten track.
+
+One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
+then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a
+long discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck
+was destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that
+she was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar's old cousin, at
+whose house the discussion took place, assured his guests that,
+handsome or not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he
+a marrying man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of
+her parents' property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy
+of his name; thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing
+her future to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that
+Mademoiselle de Temninck would marry late in life and without property
+when, young and wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
+
+A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of
+Mademoiselle de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first,
+Josephine de Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice,
+and refused to listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious;
+and to a poor girl who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring
+love in a young and handsome man carries with it such strong seduction
+that she finally consented to allow him to woo her.
+
+It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
+submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
+feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
+and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
+cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,
+--emotions, terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought,
+therefore, to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of
+love, is the keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find
+once more the lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles;
+the passionate exaltations of the heart which the face must not
+betray; the fear that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy
+of being so; the hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself,
+and the magnetic propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of
+shades; the promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an
+intonation; trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden
+desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the
+secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the
+mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine
+discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a
+flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love,
+and the weaknesses of its power.
+
+Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of
+soul. The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to
+win as the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the
+eye roused her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the
+courage to hide in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness
+which other women delight in making known by their manners,--wearing
+it proudly, like a coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar,
+the less she dared to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture,
+the question and answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to
+the man she loves, would they not be in her case mere humiliating
+speculation? A beautiful woman can be her natural self,--the world
+overlooks her little follies or her clumsiness; whereas a single
+criticising glance checks the noblest expression on the lips of an
+ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her gesture, gives timidity to
+her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing. She knows too well that
+to her alone the world condones no faults; she is denied the right to
+repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never given. This
+necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment, must
+surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
+exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the
+hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and
+stinging pity.
+
+These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
+and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her
+by the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making
+it apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
+of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest
+expression, and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her
+looks. Loving and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only
+when alone. Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she
+might have been enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow.
+Often, to test the love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing
+it, she refused to wear the draperies that concealed some portion of
+her defects, and her Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that
+Balthazar thought her beautiful as before.
+
+Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she
+yielded herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not
+seeking a domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house?
+whether he had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be
+satisfied with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a
+priceless value to the few short hours during which she trusted the
+sincerity and the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the
+world. Sometimes she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the
+inner consciousness of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such
+times she often wrung from Balthazar truths that were far from
+flattering; but she loved the embarrassment into which he fell when
+she had led him to say that what he loved in a woman was a noble soul
+and the devotion which made each day of life a constant happiness; and
+that after a few years of married life the handsomest of women was no
+more to a husband than the ugliest. After gathering up what there was
+of truth in all such paradoxes tending to reduce the value of beauty,
+Balthazar would suddenly perceive the ungraciousness of his remarks,
+and show the goodness of his heart by the delicate transitions of
+thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de Temninck that she was
+perfect in his eyes.
+
+The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
+woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
+being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling and
+sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
+fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did
+not believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however
+short its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
+
+Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
+unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
+with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III
+
+The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
+in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
+increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
+the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted
+for fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
+into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
+character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
+harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
+some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets
+bickering. One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed;
+another kindly, but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will
+is arbitrary and uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays
+off his affections as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth
+but deprives the daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man
+of social life is essentially incomplete, without being signally to
+blame. Men of talent are as variable as barometers; genius alone is
+intrinsically good.
+
+For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
+the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are
+capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
+equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
+asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
+in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which
+he is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in
+principle and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one
+there is vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are
+disposed to take dull men as the small change for great ones.
+
+Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life.
+He delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and
+like all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished
+to develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
+happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
+grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
+century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of
+the risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not
+thwart the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her
+mother's milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he
+accompanied her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be
+that of a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was
+never exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity.
+He treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes
+mutinied against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of
+a pretty woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was
+ever tender; he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with
+an ardor that crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the
+loveliness of a wife.
+
+Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
+and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
+was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love
+was equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting
+realization of his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was
+satisfied but not wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+
+Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood
+the intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it
+infinite, but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion,
+which is the genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love
+was a blind fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously
+to her death. Balthazar's own delicacy had exalted the generous
+emotions of his wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of
+giving more than she received. This mutual exchange of happiness which
+each lavished upon the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly
+outside of her personality, and filled her words, her looks, her
+actions, with an ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied
+the life of each heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one
+another excluded the paltry things of existence, while it magnified
+the smallest accessories.
+
+The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman
+whom he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young
+--are they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human
+passion go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a
+defect. To forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the
+glamour of a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the
+deification of her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written:
+"Blessed are the imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love." If
+this be so, surely beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts
+for too much in the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved
+for her beauty as another is married for her money. But the love
+inspired or bestowed by a woman disinherited of the frail advantages
+pursued by the sons of Adam, is true love, the mysterious passion, the
+ardent embrace of souls, a sentiment for which the day of
+disenchantment never comes. That woman has charms unknown to the
+world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws herself: she is beautiful
+with a meaning; her glory lies in making her imperfections forgotten,
+and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+
+The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by
+women in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra,
+Jeanne de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere,
+Madame de Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has
+rendered famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while
+the greater number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to
+some tragic end of love.
+
+This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
+more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty
+is limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is
+infinite. Is not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian
+Nights are based? An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the
+axe, and subdued to herself the inconstancy of her master.
+
+By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write,
+but up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her
+from a convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first
+entrance into the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only
+the flimsy art of dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her
+ignorance that she dared not join in conversation; for which reason
+she was supposed to have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a
+convent had one good result; it left her feelings in full force and
+her natural powers of mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress
+in the eyes of the world, she became intellectual and beautiful to her
+husband. During the first years of their married life, Balthazar
+endeavored to give her at least the knowledge that she needed to
+appear to advantage in good society: but he was doubtless too late,
+she had no memory but that of the heart. Josephine never forgot
+anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she remembered
+the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her
+evening studies nothing remained to her on the morrow.
+
+This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and
+wife, but Madame Claes's understanding of the passion of love was so
+simple and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so
+sacredly, and the thought of preserving her happiness made her so
+adroit, that she managed always to seem to understand him, and it was
+seldom indeed that her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two
+persons love one another so well that each day seems for them the
+beginning of their passion, phenomena arise out of this teeming
+happiness which change all the conditions of life. It resembles
+childhood, careless of all that is not laughter, joy, and merriment.
+Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow, man lets
+the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering
+either the means or the end.
+
+No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife
+than Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but
+her Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing;
+she knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of
+birth and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so
+high, so near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every
+thought of her heart, that her love was not without a certain
+respectful fear which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the
+habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the
+home life liberally happy,--preserving every detail of the house in
+scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing that did not serve the
+purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with the choicest food,
+and putting everything within those walls into harmony with the life
+of her heart.
+
+The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
+born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost
+equal to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul,
+especially during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle
+between those nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it
+were, an enemy of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her
+face at the moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering
+over the quiet house begins, were caused by the fear of having
+sacrificed her children to her husband.
+
+In 1805, Madame Claes's brother died without children. The Spanish law
+does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did
+not seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar
+Claes was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully
+it, Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to
+that of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had
+so nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a
+marriage which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent
+alliance, seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to
+which this sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat
+difficult to determine.
+
+The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures,
+and objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add
+anything worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family
+through long periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One
+generation followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the
+necessity of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the
+taste became hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which
+adorned the gallery leading from the family building to the
+reception-rooms on the first floor of the front house, as well as some
+fifty others placed about the salons, were the product of the patient
+researches of three centuries. Among them were choice specimens of
+Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul
+Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French
+and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and
+masterly.
+
+Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
+Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in
+fact, each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which
+belongs in a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of
+Balthazar, a last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind
+him the finest known collection of tulips.
+
+Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous
+capital, and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house
+that was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within
+by pearls of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes
+possessed a country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai.
+Instead of basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he
+followed the old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income.
+Twelve hundred ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with
+those of the richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil
+Code proved the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the
+equal division of property, the Title of Succession would some day
+leave each child with limited means, and disperse the treasures of the
+Claes collection. Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes,
+invested his wife's property so as to secure to each child a fortune
+eventually equal to his own. The house of Claes still maintained its
+moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for
+wars that had laid waste the country, but which in ten years' time, if
+well-preserved, would return an enormous value.
+
+The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
+that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
+which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season,
+when she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to
+her. She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every
+month. Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house;
+where, indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed
+on the education of her children tended to keep her.
+
+Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
+household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
+conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
+secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people.
+Balthazar Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to
+perpetuate, seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn
+vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far
+better than the cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always
+had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of following a mania
+like his ancestors.
+
+At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
+first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause.
+One night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she
+felt it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and
+her submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar's
+confidence; which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an
+affection that she had never had the slightest opening for jealousy.
+Though certain of obtaining an answer whenever she should make the
+inquiry, she still retained enough of the earlier impressions of her
+life to dread a refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had
+its phases, and only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at
+which it destroyed the happiness of the family.
+
+However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
+months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
+character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
+Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
+the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought,
+he would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are
+led by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make
+them known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came,
+surely domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when
+Balthazar became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his
+heart would surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to
+be certain that he would never forgive himself for having made his
+Pepita less than happy during several months.
+
+She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering
+by him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which
+allows no separation between religion and love, and believes in no
+sentiment without suffering. She waited for the return of her
+husband's affection, saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"
+--treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.
+
+During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last
+child. Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the
+midst of her husband's abstractions love showed itself on this
+occasion an abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman's pride,
+hurt for the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown
+abyss which separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that
+time Balthazar's condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so
+wrapped up in his domestic happiness, who played for hours with his
+children on the parlor carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed
+able to exist only in the light of his Pepita's dark eyes, did not
+even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family life, and even
+forgot his own.
+
+The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
+ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to her
+that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
+seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to
+despair, then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an
+hour of melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense,
+calling herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though
+humiliating consideration for her in this secret occupation by which
+he secured to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him
+back his independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which
+make the happiness of many a marriage.
+
+Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some
+attempt to read her husband's heart, and found it closed. Little by
+little, she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly
+loved; he neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children.
+There could be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that
+was not of the heart, but which, to a woman's mind, is not less
+withering. His love was dormant, not lost: this might be a
+consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.
+
+The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one word,
+--hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened that
+whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
+courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
+happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in
+the clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at
+least, to return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven
+brightened, she was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him
+with importunate questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to
+him, he would suddenly escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the
+gulf of meditation from which no word of hers could drag him.
+
+Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition
+began its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a
+loving woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she
+saw him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the
+fireplace, and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with
+terror the slow changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her
+eyes, sublime through love: the life of the soul was retreating from
+it; the structure remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the
+eyes were glassy, and seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were
+looking inward. When the children had gone to bed, and the silence and
+solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say, "My friend, are you ill?"
+and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he answered, he would come
+to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and
+utter a "No" so harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the
+palpitating heart of his wife.
+
+Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her
+friends, Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The
+social world of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial
+towns, had made Balthazar's aberrations a topic of conversation, and
+many persons were aware of certain details that were still unknown to
+Madame Claes. Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a
+few friends expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she
+found herself compelled to defend her husband's peculiarities.
+
+"Monsieur Claes," she said, "has undertaken a work which wholly
+absorbs him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor
+of the family but to that of his country."
+
+This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
+town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
+places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
+reaction in favor of Balthazar.
+
+The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the
+garret of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning.
+After remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his
+wife and household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there
+all day. But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the
+humiliating medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her
+ignorance, that her husband constantly imported instruments of
+physical science, valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from
+Paris, and was on the highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher's
+Stone. She ought, so her kind friends added, to think of her children,
+and her own future; it was criminal not to use her influence to draw
+Monsieur Claes from the fatal path on which he had entered.
+
+Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady,
+silenced these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of
+her apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
+system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those
+little scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less
+timid at such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his
+change, the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband
+frowned, and replied:--
+
+"My dear, you could not understand it."
+
+Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret,
+gently complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts
+of one whose life she shared.
+
+"Very well, since it interests you so much," said Balthazar, taking
+his wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, "I will tell you
+that I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest
+man on earth."
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV
+
+Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry,
+the aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself
+in the way, or that Madame Claes's secret anxieties made her less
+agreeable than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but
+her intimate friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his
+laboratory all day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only
+appeared in the bosom of his family at dinner-time.
+
+After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his
+country-house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes
+he went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving
+Madame Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing a
+fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
+other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to
+send into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and
+suffer till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which
+the gates closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful
+of the tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the
+happiness of getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of
+feeling to his wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept
+silence and dared not question him, for when she did so on the
+occasion of his first absence, he answered with an air of surprise:--
+
+"Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?"
+
+Passions never deceive. Madame Claes's anxieties corroborated the
+rumors she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her
+youth had taught her to understand the polite pity of the world.
+Resolved not to undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more
+into the privacy of her own house, now deserted by society and even by
+her nearest friends.
+
+Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+Balthazar's dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the
+least bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish
+life. At first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar's
+valet, Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing,
+but even that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when
+Balthazar, unaware of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of
+those that were stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+
+The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years,
+during which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was
+apparently and suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately
+reigned. Spanish by race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within
+her when she discovered her rival in a Science that allured her
+husband from her: torments of jealousy preyed upon her heart and
+renewed her love. What could she do against Science? Should she combat
+that tyrannous, unyielding, growing power? Could she kill an invisible
+rival? Could a woman, limited by nature, contend with an Idea whose
+delights are infinite, whose attractions are ever new? How make head
+against the fascination of ideas that spring the fresher and the
+lovelier out of difficulty, and entice a man so far from this world
+that he forgets even his dearest loves?
+
+At last one day, in spite of Balthazar's strict orders, Madame Claes
+resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his
+life was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
+her husband's labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
+mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious
+laboratory of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always.
+Lemulquinier alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him;
+but to prevent his witnessing the contention with her husband which
+she feared at the outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet
+should be out of the way. For a while she studied the goings and
+comings of the man with angry impatience; did he not know that which
+was denied to her--all that her husband hid from her, all that she
+dared not inquire into? Even a servant was preferred to a wife!
+
+The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy.
+For the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar's anger. She
+had hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her,
+threw her roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped
+rolling to the bottom.
+
+"God be praised! you are still alive!" he cried, raising her.
+
+A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw
+her husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+
+"My dear, I forbade you to come here," he said, sitting down on the
+stairs, as though prostrated. "The saints have saved your life! By
+what chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it?
+We have just escaped death."
+
+"Then I might have been happy!" she exclaimed.
+
+"My experiment has failed," continued Balthazar. "You alone could I
+forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs."
+
+Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+
+"Decompose nitrogen!" said the poor woman as she re-entered her
+chamber, and burst into tears.
+
+The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to
+have a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing
+it is for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man
+she loves. More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let
+us know when the language of their souls is not understood by us; they
+shrink from letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and
+hide their pain as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having
+higher ambitions in love than men, they desire to wed not only the
+heart of a husband, but his mind.
+
+To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which
+absorbed her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty
+of a rival might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman
+gives to her who loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a
+mortification like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and
+humiliated the feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she
+had reached a point where her ignorance parted her from her husband.
+Worse than all, last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he
+was often in danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share,
+nor even know, his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral
+prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.
+Madame Claes resolved to know at least the outward attractions of this
+fatal science, and she began secretly to study chemistry in the books.
+From this time the family became, as it were, cloistered.
+
+Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
+the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
+we find it at the moment when this history begins.
+
+The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate women,
+Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the
+transaction, the rumors and conjectures spread through the town,
+forced Madame Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's
+notary and, disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret
+anxieties or let him guess them, and even ask her the humiliating
+question,--
+
+"How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?"
+
+Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
+grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of
+the same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the
+latter, though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins.
+Monsieur Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just
+succeeded to his father's practice, was the only person who now had
+access to the House of Claes.
+
+Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete
+solitude that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of
+the disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now
+well known throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that
+her husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which
+furnished him with chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to
+the fortune and credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and
+sent the supplies without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums
+of money which became due. Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain
+the bill for all the chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
+
+Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers of
+chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which
+amounted to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and
+Pierquin studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though
+some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were
+unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of
+precious metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities.
+The large sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of
+the articles, by the precautions needed in transporting some of them,
+more especially valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain
+rare chemicals, and finally by the cost of instruments made to order
+after the designs of Monsieur Claes himself.
+
+The notary had made inquiries, in his client's interest, as to
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known
+integrity was sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their
+operations with Monsieur Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently
+sent information of results obtained by chemists in Paris, for the
+purpose of sparing him expense. Madame Claes begged the notary to keep
+the nature of these purchases from the knowledge of the people of
+Douai, lest they should declare the whole thing a mania; but Pierquin
+replied that he had already delayed to the very last moment the
+notarial deeds which the importance of the sum borrowed necessitated,
+in order not to lessen the respect in which Monsieur Claes was held.
+He then revealed the full extent of the evil, telling her plainly that
+if she could not find means to prevent her husband from thus madly
+making way with his property, in six months the patrimonial fortune of
+the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value. As for himself, he
+said, the remonstrances he had already made to his cousin, with all
+the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had been wholly
+unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was working
+for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+
+Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for
+two years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now
+added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.
+Women have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do
+they fear so much more than they hope in matters that concern the
+interests of this life? Why is their faith given only to religious
+ideas of a future existence? Why do they so ably foresee the
+catastrophes of fortune and the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment
+which unites them to the men they love gives them a sense by which
+they weigh force, measure faculties, understand tastes, passions,
+vices, virtues. The perpetual study of these causes in the midst of
+which they live gives them, no doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing
+effects in all possible relations of earthly life. What they see of
+the present enables them to judge of the future with an intuitive
+ability explained by the perfection of their nervous system, which
+allows them to seize the lightest indications of thought and feeling.
+Their whole being vibrates in communion with great moral convulsions.
+Either they feel, or they see.
+
+Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame
+Claes foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the
+deliberate ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of
+Balthazar; if it were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he
+was capable of throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute
+indifference. But what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal
+feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this
+woman that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had
+never come between them. Suddenly she found herself at times more
+mother than wife, though hitherto she had been more wife than mother.
+However ready she had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her
+children to the man who had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to
+whom she was still the only woman in the world, the remorse she felt
+for the weakness of her maternal love threw her into terrible
+alternations of feeling. As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a
+mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
+
+She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must
+be guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach
+him for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness
+he had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his
+purposes? And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the
+law, told her that parents were the depositaries and guardians of
+property, and possessed no right to alienate the material welfare
+of the children. To escape replying to such stern questions she
+preferred to shut her eyes, like one who refuses to see the abyss into
+whose depths he knows he is about to fall.
+
+For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed the
+family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
+governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
+the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
+families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
+feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
+made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his
+stable and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his
+present occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of
+his establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes
+suppressed the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her
+present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so
+without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So
+far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future
+was more becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living
+called for no explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one
+who lives up to his income is considered a madman.
+
+And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and
+to place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the
+Molinas, the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days
+before the one on which this story opens, the money derived from the
+sale of the diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three
+o'clock in the afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to
+vespers, she met Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who
+turned and accompanied her to the church, talking in a low voice of
+her situation.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said, "unless I fail in the friendship which
+binds me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your
+position, nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who
+but you can hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The
+rents from the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on
+the sums he has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your
+last chance of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this
+moment thirty thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville.
+How can you pay them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in
+sending for reagents, retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such
+playthings, what will become of you? Your whole property, except the
+house and furniture, has been dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday
+he talked of mortgaging the house, and in answer to a remark of mine,
+he cried out, 'The devil!' It was the first sign of reason I have
+known him show for three years."
+
+Madame Claes pressed the notary's arm, and said in a tone of
+suffering, "Keep it secret."
+
+Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor
+woman, pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair
+between her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its
+leaves; her mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her
+husband. The Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded
+in her soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her
+children was accomplished! Between them and their father's honor she
+must no longer hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her
+husband terrified her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that
+the mere prospect of his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the
+divine wrath. She must now depart from the submission she had sacredly
+practised as a wife. The interests of her children compelled her to
+oppose, in his most cherished tastes, the man she idolized. Must she
+not daily force him back to common matters from the higher realms of
+Science; drag him forcibly from a smiling future and plunge him into a
+materialism hideous to artists and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes
+was a Titan of science, a man big with glory; he could only have
+forgotten her for the riches of a mighty hope. Then too, was he not
+profoundly wise? she had heard him talk with such good sense on every
+subject that he must be sincere when he declared he worked for the
+glory and prosperity of his family. His love for his wife and family
+was not only vast, it was infinite. That feeling could not be extinct;
+it was magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+
+Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into
+the ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show
+him the sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when
+he was listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his
+love for her would lessen! If she had had no children, she would
+bravely and joyously have welcomed the new destiny her husband was
+making for her. Women who are brought up in opulence are quick to feel
+the emptiness of material enjoyments; and when their hearts, more
+wearied than withered, have once learned the happiness of a constant
+interchange of real feelings, they feel no shrinking from reduced
+outward circumstances, provided they are still acceptable to the man
+who has loved them. Their wishes, their pleasures, are subordinated to
+the caprices of that other life outside of their own; to them the only
+dreadful future is to lose him.
+
+At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her
+true life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And
+thus, when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the
+deep armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her
+children, directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a
+message to her husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished
+to see him. But although the old valet did his best to make his master
+leave the laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus
+gained time for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to
+the hour nor the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs
+that could not be paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that
+of the present and the future. This influx of painful interests,
+ideas, and feelings overcame her, and she wept.
+
+As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
+of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more
+distracted than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she
+was magnetized for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied
+of all expression, by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled
+from that bald brow. Under the shock of this impression she wished to
+die. But when she heard the callous voice, uttering a scientific wish
+at the moment when her heart was breaking, her courage came back to
+her; she resolved to struggle with that awful power which had torn a
+lover from her arms, a father from her children, a fortune from their
+home, happiness from all. And yet she could not repress a trepidation
+which made her quiver; in all her life no such solemn scene as this
+had taken place. This dreadful moment--did it not virtually contain
+her future, and gather within it all the past?
+
+Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies
+the smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily
+before the masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the
+rush of thoughts that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the
+feelings under the weight of which her heart was crushed as her
+husband slowly crossed the room towards the garden-door. Most women
+know that agony of inward deliberation in which Madame Claes was
+writhing. Even one whose heart has been tried by nothing worse than
+the declaration to a husband of some extravagance, or a debt to a
+dress-maker, will understand how its pulses swell and quicken when the
+matter is one of life itself.
+
+A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her
+husband's feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief;
+but to Madame Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her
+fears. When she saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was
+to spring towards him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should
+stand before him! would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man
+no longer under the glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved
+to avoid all dangerous chances at so solemn a moment, and remained
+seated, saying in a clear voice,
+
+"Balthazar."
+
+He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his
+wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at
+intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium,
+and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never
+forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine,
+unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which
+her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an
+unspeakable pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it
+put her beside herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience,
+which expressed her wounded feelings,--
+
+"Monsieur, I am speaking to you!"
+
+"What does that mean?" answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and
+casting a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon
+her like a thunderbolt.
+
+"Forgive me, my friend," she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and
+put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back.
+"I am dying!" she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+
+At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid
+reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of
+this attack. Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the
+door upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient
+wooden staircase that his wife's dress having caught on the jaws of
+one of the griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was
+torn off with a loud noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule
+between their chambers, but the door of Josephine's bedroom was
+locked.
+
+He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, "My God! the key,
+where is the key?"
+
+"Thank you, dear friend," said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. "This
+is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+heart."
+
+"Good God!" cried Claes, "the key!--here come the servants."
+
+Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and
+left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving
+them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+
+"What is it, my dear life?" he said, sitting down beside her, and
+taking her hand and kissing it.
+
+"Nothing--now," she answered. "I suffer no longer. Only, I would I had
+the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet."
+
+"Why gold?" he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+kissed her once more upon the forehead. "Do you not give me the
+greatest of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and
+precious wife?"
+
+"Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I
+see that you are still the same."
+
+"What anguish do you speak of, dear?"
+
+"My friend, we are ruined."
+
+"Ruined!" he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand,
+holding it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long
+unheard: "To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless.
+Yesterday, in searching for a far more important secret, I think I
+found the means of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond.
+Oh, my dear wife! in a few days' time you will forgive me all my
+forgetfulness--I am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to
+you just now? Be indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you,
+whose toils are full of you--of us."
+
+"Enough, enough!" she said, "let us talk of it all to-night, dear
+friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much
+joy."
+
+"To-night," he resumed; "yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave
+my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of
+the heart--Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!"
+
+"You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?"
+
+"Poor child, you cannot understand it."
+
+"You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read
+Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
+Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,--in fact, all the books about
+the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall
+understand you."
+
+"Oh! you are indeed an angel," cried Balthazar, falling at her feet,
+and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. "Yes, we
+will understand each other in all things."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "I would throw myself into those hellish fires which
+heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you
+thus." Then, hearing her daughter's step in the anteroom, she sprang
+quickly forward. "What is it, Marguerite?" she said to her eldest
+daughter.
+
+"My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to
+dinner we need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this
+morning."
+
+Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them
+to the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+ante-chamber as she said:
+
+"My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your
+right."
+
+"Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be
+complete," she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch
+expression on her face. "My friend, go into your own room; do me the
+kindness to dress for dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off
+this ragged clothing; see those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric
+acid which left these yellow edges to the holes? Make yourself young
+again,--I will send you Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my
+dress."
+
+Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication,
+forgetting that it was locked on his side. He went out through the
+anteroom.
+
+"Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I
+don't want Martha," said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+
+Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a
+joyous action, exclaiming: "Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are
+in your muslin gown and that pink sash!" Then he kissed her forehead
+and pressed her hand.
+
+"Mamma, papa has kissed me!" cried Marguerite, running into her
+mother's room. "He seems so joyous, so happy!"
+
+"My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled
+for the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the
+object of his search. This day is a festival for us all."
+
+"My dear mamma," replied Marguerite, "we shall not be alone in our
+joy, for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself.
+Oh! put on another sash, this is faded."
+
+"So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?"
+
+"In the parlor, playing with Jean."
+
+"Where are Gabriel and Felicie?"
+
+"I hear them in the garden."
+
+"Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your
+father has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy
+to look at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your
+father in dressing."
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V
+
+As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children
+through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and
+saw that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings
+spotted with gold, commonly called "darning-needles."
+
+"Be good, my darlings," she said, raising the lower sash of the window
+and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door
+of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in
+joyous tones:--
+
+"You won't leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+can."
+
+Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never
+have supposed her lame.
+
+"When monsieur carried madame upstairs," said the old valet, whom she
+met on the staircase, "he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke
+the jaw of that griffin; I'm sure I don't know who can put it on
+again. There's our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!"
+
+"Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don't have it mended at all--it is
+not a misfortune," said his mistress.
+
+"What can have happened?" thought Lemulquinier; "why isn't it a
+misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?"
+
+"Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin," said Madame Claes, opening the
+parlor door.
+
+The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any
+but that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--
+
+"Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
+exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each."
+
+"Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine
+with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible
+pretext, I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself
+about it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In
+a few months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has
+borrowed."
+
+Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
+at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
+followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--
+
+"I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+moment."
+
+Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon
+her lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the
+notary, with a pretended air of indifference.
+
+Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with
+vulgar good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than
+melancholy, and a pensive habit in which there was more of indecision
+than thought. People called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager
+after his own interests, and too extortionate towards others to have
+set up a genuine divorce from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his
+affected silence, his habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the
+void, seemed to indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely
+concealed the shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively
+with earthly interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy.
+To marry into the family of Claes would have been to him an object of
+extreme desire, if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He
+could seem generous, but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And
+thus, without explaining to himself the motive for his change of
+manner, his behavior was harsh, peremptory, and surly, like that of an
+ordinary business man, when he thought the Claes were ruined;
+accommodating, affectionate, and almost servile, when he saw reason to
+believe in a happy issue to his cousin's labors. Sometimes he beheld
+an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might
+aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned
+to make her his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without
+malevolence, not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a
+naive selfishness which rendered all his better qualities incomplete,
+while certain absurdities of manner spoiled his personal appearance.
+
+Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken
+to her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of
+the change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she
+guessed its meaning and tried to read her daughter's mind by a
+penetrating glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin;
+but the young girl's manner showed complete indifference.
+
+After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current
+topics of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom,
+where his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound
+of his boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and
+active man, and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere
+expectation of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended
+the stairs. Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period.
+He wore highly polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the
+white silk stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with
+gold buttons, a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He
+had trimmed his beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails,
+and washed his hands, all with such care that he was scarcely
+recognizable to those who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man
+almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the notary saw a
+Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous and
+affable presence was full of its former attractions. The weariness and
+suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to
+the bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.
+
+"Good-evening, Pierquin," said Monsieur Claes.
+
+Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+wife's lap and tossed him in the air.
+
+"See that little fellow!" he exclaimed to the notary. "Doesn't such a
+pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!" he
+cried, tossing Jean into the air; "down, down! up! down!"
+
+The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the
+ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that
+she might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,
+--simple apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+
+"Let me see how you can walk," said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+
+The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold
+buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his
+boots.
+
+"You are a darling!" cried Balthazar, kissing him; "you are a Claes,
+you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?" he said to
+his eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. "Are you
+struggling valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you
+taken sharp hold of mathematics?"
+
+Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+that characterized him.
+
+"My dear Pierquin," he said, "perhaps you have something to say to
+me." He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, "Come and see
+my tulips."
+
+Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to
+repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable,
+so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and
+kissed her, exclaiming:--
+
+"My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever
+to-day."
+
+"It is long since I have seen my father so kind," answered the young
+girl.
+
+Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her
+his arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into
+the next room, the whole family following.
+
+The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated
+with paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with
+tall oaken side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a
+curious piece of family china. The walls were hung with violet
+leather, on which designs of game and other hunting objects were
+stamped in gold. Carefully arranged here and there above the shelves,
+shone the brilliant plumage of strange birds, and the lustre of rare
+shells. The chairs, which evidently had not been changed since the
+beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the square shape with
+twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed stuff, common
+to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of the Madonna
+della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the gilt
+nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to
+time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+
+The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this
+room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their
+graceful antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of
+respectability. The glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet
+which may be seen in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The
+dinner-service of faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in
+the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the English manufactory of
+Wedgwood. The silver-ware was massive, with square sides and designs
+in high relief,--genuine family plate, whose pieces, in every variety
+of form, fashion, and chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and
+the progress towards fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were
+fringed, a fashion altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will
+readily be supposed that the Claes's household made it a point of
+honor to possess the best.
+
+All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for the
+daily use of the family. The front house, where the social
+entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels,
+being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost
+to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in
+the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and
+simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew
+outside the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches
+twined about the casements.
+
+"You are faithful to the old traditions, madame," said Pierquin, as he
+received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread.
+"This is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my
+uncle des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic
+soup of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de
+Savarus of Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom;
+but everywhere else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days
+everything is changing; furniture is made from Greek models; wherever
+you go you see helmets, lances, shields, and bows and arrows!
+Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old furniture, melting
+up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres porcelain,--which
+does not compare with either old Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as
+for me, I'm Flemish to the core; my heart actually bleeds to see the
+coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture for the mere
+value of the wood and the metal. The fact is, society wants to change
+its skin. Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods of art.
+When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously done.
+During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the
+Louvre. On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,--no depth,
+no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on
+their canvas. And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient
+school of art! Ah, bah!--"
+
+"Our old masters," replied Balthazar, "studied the combination of
+colors and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and
+rain. You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are
+less cultivated in these days than formerly."
+
+Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary's
+remark that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her
+the brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which
+she had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off
+the thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+
+"Ha! ha!" Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes's mind
+returned to the conversation, "so they are discussing my work in
+Douai, are they?"
+
+"Yes," replied the notary, "every one is asking what it is you spend
+so much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring
+that a man like you should be searching for the Philosopher's stone. I
+ventured to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a
+scheme was attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take
+God's work out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a
+business man to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still,
+I admit that I share the regret people feel at your absence from
+society. You might as well not live here at all. Really, madame, you
+would have been delighted had you heard the praises showered on
+Monsieur Claes and on you."
+
+"You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+evil is to make me ridiculous," said Balthazar. "Ha! so they think me
+ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete
+in honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the
+respect my dear townsmen bestow on wealth."
+
+Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his
+tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his
+children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and
+pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was
+certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks
+and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for
+heart which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.
+
+Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about the
+table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of his
+secret hopes. The sudden change in his master's ways was even more
+significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw
+happiness he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments
+he had come to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the
+drift of his master's researches from certain exclamations which
+escaped the chemist when expected results disappointed him, or whether
+the innate tendency of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the
+ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that
+Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a superstitious feeling that
+was a mixture of terror, admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory
+was to him what a lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope.
+Every night he went to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float
+in gold"; and every morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of
+the night before.
+
+His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their
+moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family
+which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of
+linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt
+was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed
+from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
+misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition
+of a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders
+and its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by
+way of euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of
+character or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and
+long, and seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and
+shining patches that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and
+thin; his whole demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes,
+yellow as the wig which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none
+but oblique glances.
+
+The old valet's outward man was in keeping with the feeling of
+curiosity which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to
+his master, the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about
+which he maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of
+charm. The denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pass with an
+interest mingled with awe; to all their questions he returned
+sibylline answers big with mysterious treasures. Proud of being
+necessary to his master, he assumed an annoying authority over his
+companions, employing it to further his own interests and compel a
+submission which made him virtually the ruler of the house. Contrary
+to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply attached to the
+families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for Balthazar. If any
+trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event happened to the
+family, he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer as
+phlegmatically as ever.
+
+Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in the
+garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each
+flower being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so
+arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain
+dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower,
+named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved
+edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's
+father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this
+treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed
+that he kept the plant always in the parlor and often spent whole days
+in contemplating it. The stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably
+green; the proportions of the plant were in harmony with the
+proportions of the flower, whose seven colors were distinguishable
+from each other with the clearly defined brilliancy which formerly
+gave such fabulous value to these dazzling plants.
+
+"Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs' worth of
+tulips," said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at
+the many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the
+beauty of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then
+transforming into jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary's
+words.
+
+"What good do they do you?" continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar;
+"you ought to sell them."
+
+"Bah! am I in want of money?" replied Claes, in the tone of a man to
+whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+
+There was a moment's silence, during which the children made many
+exclamations.
+
+"See this one, mamma!"
+
+"Oh! here's a beauty!"
+
+"Tell me the name of that one!"
+
+"What a gulf for human reason to sound!" cried Balthazar, raising his
+hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. "A compound of
+hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative
+proportions, under the same conditions and by the same principle,
+these manifold colors, each of which constitutes a distinct result."
+
+His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so
+rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as if
+remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a
+mysterious sign, saying,--
+
+"You do not yet understand me, but you will."
+
+Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual
+to him.
+
+"No, I am sure you do not understand him," said Pierquin, taking his
+coffee from Marguerite's hand. "The Ethiopian can't change his skin,
+nor the leopard his spots," he whispered to Madame Claes. "Have the
+goodness to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn't
+draw him out of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any
+rate."
+
+So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+kissed little Jean in his mother's arms, and retired with a low bow.
+
+When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife
+round the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie
+was causing her by whispering in her ear,--
+
+"I knew how to get rid of him."
+
+Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him
+see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her
+forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+
+"Let us go back into the parlor," she said, after a pause.
+
+Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented
+games for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did
+not notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About
+half-past nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the
+parlor after helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her
+mother seated in the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife's
+hand as he talked to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and
+was about to retire without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight
+of her, and said:--
+
+"Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down,
+kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into
+your own room; but do not sit up too late."
+
+"Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and
+wife remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the
+last glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden,
+whose outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering
+darkness. When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in
+a voice of emotion,--
+
+"Let us go upstairs."
+
+Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's
+chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable.
+The good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of
+virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic
+superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender
+feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and
+sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have
+wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had
+done so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the
+aspect of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a
+pretty creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a
+necessity. No one better understood the meaning of the saying, "A
+pretty woman is self-created,"--a maxim which guided every action of
+Napoleon's first wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes
+was ever natural and true.
+
+Though Balthazar knew his wife's chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of
+soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first
+time. The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid
+colors of the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases
+judiciously placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of
+lights whose effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial
+music. The gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the
+coverings of pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches
+of gold, soberly distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by
+the varied colors of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious
+stones. The secret of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he!
+Josephine could not tell him in words more eloquent that he was now
+and ever the mainspring of her joys and woes.
+
+The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out
+sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The
+silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume
+that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains,
+carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention
+of guarding the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the
+reconquered husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin,
+which was trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came
+about her throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was
+exquisitely glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a
+raven's wing, went to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the
+door and allowed no sound to penetrate the chamber from without.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI
+
+At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was
+sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a
+sensitive woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering
+it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman's greatest
+charm lies in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the
+admission of a weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the
+nobler sentiments. Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical
+seduction? When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled
+sound along the wooden rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as
+though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a
+chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to
+help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the
+olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out
+in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his
+arms and carry her to her sofa. This was what she wanted.
+
+"You promised me," she said, taking his hand which she held between
+her own magnetic palms, "to tell me the secret of your researches.
+Admit, dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the
+courage to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be
+able to understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me
+first how it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and
+oppressed, when over night I had left you happy."
+
+"Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+coquettishly delightful?"
+
+"Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to
+me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to
+keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of
+all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite,
+while Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go
+alone. I hate all that comes between us. If you win the glory for
+which you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--I
+alone--should be the giver of your happiness."
+
+"No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that
+first led me into this glorious path."
+
+"A man!" she cried in terror.
+
+"Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in
+1809?"
+
+"Do I remember him!" she exclaimed; "I am often annoyed because my
+memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from
+coals of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull
+stripped of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!
+--What awful impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had
+been a room in any inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here."
+
+"That Polish gentleman," resumed Balthazar, "was named Adam de
+Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give
+up the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I
+think, by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each
+other as adepts. When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in
+pieces, the captain gave a start of surprise. 'Have you studied
+chemistry?' he asked. 'With Lavoisier,' I answered. 'You are happy in
+being rich and free,' he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came
+the sigh of a man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish
+hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated,
+not to be expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that
+startled me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last
+gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation
+for his country's fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had
+always felt an irresistible vocation. 'And I see you recognize as I
+do,' he added, 'that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder,
+each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the
+same qualitative result.'
+
+"He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye,
+he said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose
+general meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a
+force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture,
+which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer
+strikes the anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used,
+which were to me like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah's
+tongue; for my studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their
+full bearing.
+
+"'Monsieur,' he said, 'the parity of these three substances, in
+appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
+nature ought to have a single principle. The researches of modern
+chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural
+effects. Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic
+nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does
+all animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or
+less perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power,
+which gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more
+important part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the
+products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three
+gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance,
+non-metallic and solid, carbon. Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so
+simple, devoid of movement and sensation, denied the power of growth
+(too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple
+substances, or elements, whose different combinations make its
+products. Is it probable that means should be more numerous where a
+lesser number of results are produced?
+
+"'My master's opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have
+one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the
+knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought
+to rediscover. Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act
+again; we have chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would
+apparently then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we
+could decompose nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we
+should have but three. This brings us at once close upon the great
+Ternary of the ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom
+we do wrong to scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It
+is much, and yet little,--much, because the science has never recoiled
+before difficulty; little, in comparison with what remains to be done.
+Chance has served her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of
+crystallized pure carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance
+possible to create? The old alchemists, who thought that gold was
+decomposable and therefore creatable, shrank from the idea of
+producing the diamond. Yet we have discovered the nature and the law
+of its composition.
+
+"'As for me,' he continued, 'I have gone farther still. An experiment
+proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses,
+which lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first
+place, the experiment itself.
+
+"'Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic
+nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
+Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may
+reach the product of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts
+from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by
+analysis. Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a
+sufficient quantity to produce after burning them enough ashes for the
+experiment. Well, by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic
+acid, aluminium, phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of
+magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron,
+precisely as if the cress had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook.
+Now, those elements did not exist in the brimstone, a simple substance
+which served for soil to the cress, nor in the distilled water with
+which the plant was nourished, whose composition was known. But since
+they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we can explain their
+presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of a primary
+element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and also
+to all those by which we environed it. Thus the air, the distilled
+water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in
+the cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should
+have one common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the
+sun.
+
+"'From this unimpeachable experiment,' he cried, 'I deduce the
+existence of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all
+created things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net
+meaning and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to
+me to be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose
+shrine humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter,
+the medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all
+things human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+
+"'It was at this point,' he went on, 'that poverty put an end to my
+researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master
+of your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to
+the conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The
+PRIME MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in
+carbon. The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and
+positive electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will
+establish those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all
+phenomenal existence.
+
+"'Oh, monsieur!' he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that I
+carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the
+ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command
+without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted
+dream. My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and
+cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and
+yet despise. My soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed,
+immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the
+Alkahest,--for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely
+alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white, others
+a yellow flower. The same phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the
+same leaves, and apparently constituted exactly alike,--one produces
+yellow silk, another white; and if we come to man himself, we find
+that children often resemble neither father nor mother. The logical
+deduction from this fact surely involves the explanation of all the
+phenomena of nature.
+
+"'Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to
+believe that he created all things by the simplest method? The
+Pythagorean worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and
+which represented Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first
+aggregation and the type of all the rest; that of the number THREE,
+which throughout all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter,
+Force, and Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages,
+of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus,
+Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great
+Triad for their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men
+who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that
+our work is only carrying onward the passionate researches of those
+great men. Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to
+have grappled with Motion. Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and
+leading men uselessly to their death, my former master is piling
+discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards the Absolute, while I
+--I shall die like a dog in the trenches!'
+
+"When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a
+touching tone of brotherhood, 'If I see cause for a great experiment I
+will bequeath it to you before I die.'--My Pepita," cried Balthazar,
+taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
+cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
+timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--"
+
+"Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
+husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
+deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the
+happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of
+the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that
+flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the
+devil could have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither
+husband, nor father, nor master of your family."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
+piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising
+above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine
+purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the
+treasures of your heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know
+what I have done. In these three years I have made giant strides--"
+
+His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
+she wept as she listened to him.
+
+"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
+substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
+Why!" he continued, noticing that his wife wept, "I have even
+decomposed tears. Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride
+of sodium, mucin, and water."
+
+He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that
+contracted Josephine's features; he was again astride of Science,
+which bore him with outspread wings far away from material existence.
+
+"This analysis, my dear," he went on, "is one of the most convincing
+proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its
+hearth is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction
+of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case
+combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner,
+again, vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations
+producing dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess
+certain vegetables which existed before the period of the last
+cataclysm. But each time that nature has perfected an organism and
+then, for some unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation,
+instinct, or intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system),
+these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in
+direct proportion to the result obtained. Man, who represents the
+highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by
+which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is,
+among all zoological creations, the one in which combustion is found
+in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen
+to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a
+man's body reveals to our analysis. May not these substances be traces
+left within him of the passage of the electric fluid which is the
+principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself
+by a greater variety of compounds in him than in any other animal?
+Should not he have faculties above those of all other created beings
+for the purpose of absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute
+principle? and may he not assimilate that principle so as to produce,
+in some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so.
+Man is a retort. In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too
+little phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a
+madman too much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while
+that of a man of genius is saturated to its due degree. The man
+constantly in love, the street-porter, the dancer, the large eater,
+are the ones who disperse the force resulting from their electrical
+apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--"
+
+"Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
+love--"
+
+"An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!"
+
+As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
+face rose by degrees to inspiration. "I shall make metals," he cried;
+"I shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!"
+
+"Will you be the happier?" she asked in despair. "Accursed science!
+accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride,
+the sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God."
+
+"Oh! oh! God!"
+
+"He denies Him!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes, God wields a
+power that you can never gain."
+
+At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
+looked at his wife and trembled.
+
+"What power?" he asked.
+
+"Primal force--motion," she replied. "This is what I learn from the
+books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances
+come, like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign
+to them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have
+them, can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the
+Malaga wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun,
+of the atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating."
+
+"If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create."
+
+"Will nothing stop him?" cried Pepita. "Oh! my love, my love! it is
+killed! I have lost him!"
+
+She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the
+sanctity of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater
+beauty than ever through her tears.
+
+"Yes," she resumed in a broken voice, "you are dead to all. I see it
+but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
+it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
+companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I
+would fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed
+created you to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he
+has put within your breast the irresistible power that has mastered
+you-- But no; God is good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts
+of the woman who adores you, of the children you are bound to protect.
+It is the Evil One alone who is helping you to walk amid these
+fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness, where the light of
+faith does not guide you,--nothing guides you but a terrible belief in
+your own faculties! Were it otherwise, would you not have seen that
+you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me
+justice, you, my God on earth! I reproach you not; were we alone I
+would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, 'Take it, fling
+it into your furnace, turn it into smoke'; and I should laugh to see
+it float away in vapor. Were you poor, I would beg without shame for
+the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could my body yield your hateful
+Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those fires with joy, since your
+glory, your delight is in that unfound secret. But our children,
+Claes, our children! what will become of them if you do not soon
+discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin came to-day? He
+came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and cannot pay. I told
+him that you had the money, so that I might spare you the
+mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
+silver."
+
+She saw her husband's eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
+despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+
+"My friend," she cried, "refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore
+you, do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love
+them, Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath
+them a wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them.
+Motherhood has sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I
+have sometimes wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to
+your soul, your life! And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the
+cause of my children before you, and not my own?"
+
+Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot
+forth her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over
+her rival. Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at
+her feet.
+
+"Have I caused you such grief?" he said, in the tone of a man waking
+from a painful dream.
+
+"My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of
+yourself," she said, passing her hand over his hair. "Sit here beside
+me," she continued, pointing to the sofa. "Ah! I can forget it all
+now, now that you come back to us; all can be repaired--but you will
+not abandon me again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant
+me a woman's influence on your heart, that influence which is so
+needful to the happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds
+of great men. You may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but
+let me check you a little for your good. I will never abuse the power
+if you will grant it. Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love
+Chemistry better than you love us. Hear me, we will be generous; we
+will let Science share your heart; but oh! my Claes, be just; let us
+have our half. Tell me, is not my disinterestedness sublime?"
+
+She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
+women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
+contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
+habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the
+rebirth of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power
+she thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
+
+"Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may
+wish us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your
+ethereal disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of
+looking into futurity."
+
+"Yes," he exclaimed, "by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
+on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
+class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The
+prophet sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare
+and too obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation."
+
+"Is this," she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she
+had so unfortunately reawakened, "what you call an affinity?"
+
+"No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are
+neutral, they produce no reaction--"
+
+"Oh! hush, hush," she cried, "you will make me die of grief. I can
+never bear to see my rival in the transports of your love."
+
+"But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of
+my family. You are the basis of all my hopes."
+
+"Ah, look me in the eyes!"
+
+The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole
+person Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and
+muslin.
+
+"Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science," he said. "If I
+fall back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must
+drag me from them; I desire it."
+
+She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,
+--a hand that was both strong and delicate.
+
+"But I ask more," she said.
+
+"You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all," he answered.
+
+"I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science," she said,
+with fire in her eyes.
+
+"So be it--let Chemistry go to the devil!"
+
+"This moment effaces all!" she cried. "Make me suffer now, if you
+will."
+
+Tears came to Balthazar's eyes, as he heard these words.
+
+"You were right, love," he said. "I have seen you through a veil; I
+have not understood you."
+
+"If it concerned only me," she said, "willingly would I have suffered
+in silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign.
+But your sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate
+your property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the
+world will take little account of it, it will only blame you and
+yours. But surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that
+his wife has shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of
+this no more," she cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry.
+"To-night, my Claes, let us not be less than happy."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII
+
+On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
+Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
+to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did
+not enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
+move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months,
+only returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes
+determined to give, as in former years, to commemorate his
+wedding-day. He now began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder
+which his experiments and his indifference had brought into his
+business affairs.
+
+Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named
+Martha, who had never left her mistress since the latter left her
+convent. It was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole
+society of Douai with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all
+difficulties by proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the
+gardener's son as a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin's manservant. Thus
+the pinched circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the
+community.
+
+During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+cleverly able to outwit her husband's listlessness. She commissioned
+him to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand
+staircase, the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque
+to order one of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the
+burgher tables in the northern departments. A fete like that the Claes
+were about to give is a serious affair, involving thought and care and
+active correspondence, in a land where traditions of hospitality put
+the family honor so much at stake that to servants as well as masters
+a grand dinner is like a victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived
+from Ostend, grouse were imported from Scotland, fruits came from
+Paris; in short, not the smallest accessory was lacking to the
+hereditary luxury.
+
+A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
+government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary
+fete of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion
+to the neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to
+make it a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the
+fete was talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the
+toilettes, the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited,
+and the events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These
+preparations now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of
+the Alkahest. Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the
+servant of science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming,
+as the master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought
+of surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special
+character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among
+all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
+fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
+and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+
+The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
+luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the
+Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the
+grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made
+known on the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound
+grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved
+by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
+
+Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for
+Balthazar from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he
+wrote, from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He
+remembered his promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host
+several ideas on the subject of the Absolute, which had come to him
+since the period of their meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a
+reverie which apparently did honor to his patriotism; but his wife was
+not misled by it. To her, this festal day brought a double mourning:
+and the ball, during which the House of Claes shone with departing
+lustre, was sombre and sad in spite of its magnificence, and the many
+choice treasures gathered by the hands of six generations, which the
+people of Douai now beheld for the last time.
+
+Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes
+by the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and
+especially by the harmony of her form and countenance with the
+characteristics of her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish
+girl whom the painters of that country loved to represent,--the head
+perfectly rounded and full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and
+laid smoothly on the brow, gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome
+arms, natural stoutness which did not detract from her beauty, a timid
+air, and yet, on the high square brow an expression of firmness,
+hidden at present under an apparent calmness and docility. Without
+being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little natural enjoyment.
+Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief expressions of
+Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that seemed cold at
+first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain grace of
+outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic
+happiness. By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet
+explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was
+the living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of
+Bruges, whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the
+resemblance.
+
+The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters
+forbade the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not
+exclude the pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however,
+retired early; only the more indifferent remained, together with a few
+card players and the intimate friends of the family. Little by little
+the brilliantly lighted house, to which all the notabilities of Douai
+had flocked, sank into silence, and by one o'clock in the morning the
+great gallery was deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon
+after another, and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant,
+grew dark and gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before
+the family. When the Claes returned to their own appartement,
+Balthazar gave his wife the letter he had received from the Polish
+officer: Josephine returned it with a mournful gesture; she foresaw
+the coming doom.
+
+From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the
+weariness and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after
+the family breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little
+Jean, and talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or
+embroidery or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the
+talk, and seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his
+wife came down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in
+an easy-chair looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite
+undisturbed by the rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was
+brought in, he read it slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to
+kill the time. Then he would get up, look at the sky through the
+window panes, go back to his chair and mend the fire drearily, as
+though he were deprived of all consciousness of his own movements by
+the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
+was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
+length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons
+who have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for
+subjects of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of
+material existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of
+expansion which need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of
+material life cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide
+promptly; and the mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving
+natures. Consequently, two isolated beings who know each other
+thoroughly ought to seek their enjoyments in the higher regions of
+thought; for it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the
+immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has
+accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable,
+unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless
+simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such
+charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human
+phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and
+comprehend all.
+
+During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
+been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
+ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education
+of his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such
+resources were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when
+Josephine's relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon
+to Louis XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps
+of power or the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the
+sham embassies from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After
+wasting the revenues of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or
+successful, was reduced to the expedients of a family heir to raise
+the money he needed; in the midst of his grandeur he felt his
+impotence, and the royal nurse who had rocked the cradles of his
+children was often at her wit's end to rock his, or soothe the monarch
+now suffering from his misuse of men and things, of life and God.
+Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the
+clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of
+treasures for the human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as
+artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the
+pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two sovereigns;
+though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, the
+other by his weakness.
+
+What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
+she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week.
+Cafes at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which,
+during a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and
+liqueurs which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the
+Flemish dainties and took their "cafe noir" or their "cafe au lait
+frappe," while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's
+toilettes, and related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture
+by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet
+plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet,
+Balthazar's efforts to play the part of host, his constrained
+courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a state of
+languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
+
+These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
+it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice,
+they retarded Claes's fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though
+he never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least
+regret for the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he
+grew to have the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression
+of a sick person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the
+very manner with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic
+pyramids in the fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he
+was doing. When night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt
+released him from the importunities of thought: the next day he rose
+wearily to encounter another day,--seeming to measure time as the
+tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to cross.
+
+If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to
+see the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings
+of the mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the
+heart. She dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to
+the laughter of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air
+of a man absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw
+him shake off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem
+cheerful, that he might not distress others. The little coquetries of
+the father with his daughters, or his games with little Jean,
+moistened the eyes of the poor wife, who often left the room to hide
+the feelings that heroic effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of
+which is well understood by women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks
+their heart. At such times Madame Claes longed to say, "Kill me, and
+do what you will!"
+
+Little by little Balthazar's eyes lost their fire and took the
+glaucous opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His
+attentions to his wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing,
+grew heavy and inert. These symptoms became more marked towards the
+end of April, terrifying Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now
+intolerable, and who had all along reproached herself a thousand times
+while she admired the Flemish loyalty which kept her husband faithful
+to his promise.
+
+At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring
+him back to life.
+
+"Dear friend," she said, "I release you from your promise."
+
+Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You are thinking of your researches, are you not?" she continued.
+
+He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from
+remonstrating, Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss
+into which they were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed
+it, smiling.
+
+"Thank you," she said; "now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
+me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
+jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
+and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
+diamonds."
+
+The joy that suddenly lighted her husband's face was like a
+death-knell to the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man's passion
+was stronger than himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled
+him to walk without faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the
+edge of a precipice. For him faith, for her doubt,--for her the heavier
+burden: does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she
+chose to believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her
+connivance in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
+
+"The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
+Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
+the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
+and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
+whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on
+the contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily,
+delighted to give vent to the joy that choked him.
+
+From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
+The future of her children, their father's credit, were two motives as
+powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+unhappy woman never knew another hour's peace of mind. The demon of
+Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
+agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
+and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair,
+paralyzed by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food,
+like those of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory,
+tormented her spirit and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes,
+blaming herself for compliance with a passion whose object was futile
+and condemned by the Church, she would rise, go to the window on the
+courtyard and gaze with terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If
+the smoke were rising, an expression of despair came into her face, a
+conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in her heart and mind. She
+beheld her children's future fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not
+saving their father's life? was it not her first duty to make him
+happy? This last thought calmed her for a moment.
+
+She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
+even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
+were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
+seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
+through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
+building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
+her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
+breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar's
+experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming
+success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she
+looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
+Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
+the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the
+other.
+
+Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought,
+the poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and
+despair which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the
+anxieties of the mother trembling for her children. She now practised
+the doleful silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing
+the gloom that pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that
+melancholy parlor without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad
+maternal foresight, she trained her daughters to household work, and
+tried to make them skilful in womanly employments, that they might
+have the means of living if destitution came. The outward calm of this
+quiet home covered terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer
+Balthazar had used the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty
+thousand francs in debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
+
+In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without
+result as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when
+he ended the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his
+impotence crushed him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted
+enormous sums of money drove him to despair. It was a frightful
+catastrophe. He left the garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and
+threw himself into a chair in the midst of his children, remaining
+motionless for some minutes as though dead, making no answer to the
+questions his wife pressed upon him. Tears came at last to his relief,
+and he rushed to his own chamber that no one might witness his
+despair.
+
+Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone
+with her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man,
+these broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the
+husband and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past
+sufferings. The victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said
+to her in a tone of dreadful conviction: "I am a wretch; I have
+gambled away the lives of my children, and your life; you can have no
+happiness unless I kill myself,"--the words struck home to her heart;
+she knew her husband's nature enough to fear he might at once act out
+the despairing wish: an inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources
+of life itself, seized her, and was all the more dangerous because she
+controlled its violent effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
+
+"My friend," she said, "I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose
+friendship does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction
+at our ruin, but an old man who has been as good to me as a father.
+The Abbe de Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save
+ourselves from ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those
+in the gallery is enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your
+property, and also all that you owe to Messieurs Protez and
+Chiffreville, who have no doubt an account against you."
+
+Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which
+was now white.
+
+"Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
+they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus, to
+display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families: he
+thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
+recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
+amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
+continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with
+very little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in
+course of time and by economy; meantime you will be happy."
+
+Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the
+protector of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one
+with his Pepita's, now held her in his arms without perceiving the
+horrible convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair
+and her lips with a nervous shudder.
+
+"I dared not tell you," he said, "that between me and the
+Unconditioned, the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To
+gasify metals, I only need to find the means of submitting them to
+intense heat in some centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is
+nil,--in short, in a vacuum."
+
+Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected
+a passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem
+in chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to
+the parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened
+daughters, and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her
+hands, kneeling one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her
+grief, and asking at intervals, "Mother, what is it?"
+
+"My poor children, I am dying; I feel it."
+
+The answer struck home to Marguerite's heart; she saw, for the first
+time on her mother's face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which
+only comes on olive-tinted skins.
+
+"Martha, Martha!" cried Felicie, "come quickly; mamma wants you."
+
+The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the
+livid hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in
+Spanish,--
+
+"Body of Christ! madame is dying!"
+
+Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+
+"Don't alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha," said her
+mistress. "My poor dear girls," she added, pressing Marguerite and
+Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; "I wish I could live
+long enough to see you married and happy. Martha," she continued,
+"tell Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name
+to come here."
+
+The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha,
+both devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their
+own affections. Martha's dreadful announcement,--"Madame is dying;
+monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,"--forced
+certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier.
+He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
+one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
+boudoir of a fine lady.
+
+"I knew how it would end," said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+"There's no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
+himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat."
+
+Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
+which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
+Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
+made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a
+motion worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large
+mouth with bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+
+"Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,"
+he said; "and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold.
+There's not the thickness of a farthing between us and--"
+
+"Well, you've got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don't you give
+'em to monsieur? he's your master, and if you are so sure of his
+doings--"
+
+"You don't know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
+and heat the water," remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+
+"I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
+and if you are allowed to have your way, you'll make ducks and drakes
+of everything till there's nothing left."
+
+"And monsieur," added Martha, entering the kitchen, "will kill madame,
+just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won't let him swallow
+up everything he's got. He's possessed by the devil; anybody can see
+that. You don't risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
+haven't got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when we
+are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
+Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l'Abbe de Solis."
+
+"I've got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the
+laboratory in order," said the valet. "Besides, it's too far--go
+yourself."
+
+"Just hear the brute!" cried Martha. "Pray who is to give madame her
+foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+head."
+
+"Mulquinier," said Marguerite, coming into the servants' hall, which
+adjoined the kitchen, "on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call
+at Dr. Pierquin's house and ask him to come here at once."
+
+"Ha! you've got to go now," said Josette.
+
+"Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order," said
+Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
+despotic air.
+
+"Father," said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
+descending the stairs, "can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
+town?"
+
+"Now you're forced to go, you old barbarian!" cried Martha, as she
+heard Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter's bidding.
+
+The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the
+family whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two
+women and Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of
+increasing the loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+
+This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the
+future of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor
+in misfortune.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII
+
+Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine's
+condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He
+saw them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor,
+too weak to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed
+abstractedly at his daughters now attending on their mother, without
+inquiring the cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or
+Jean attempted to speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to
+Balthazar. Such a scene was of a nature to make a young girl think;
+and Marguerite, placed as she was between her father and mother, was
+old enough and sensible enough to weigh their conduct.
+
+There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame
+Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar
+impelled her to justify in Marguerite's eyes conduct that might, to
+the upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The
+very respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making
+herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his
+meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal
+majesty. Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only
+increased Marguerite's admiration for her mother, to whom she was more
+particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives. This
+feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose
+causes naturally occupied the young girl's mind. No human power could
+have hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by Josette, from
+enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of her home
+during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes's reserve,
+Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the
+domestic drama. She was soon to be her mother's active confidante, and
+later, under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+
+Madame Claes's watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter, to
+whom she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards
+Balthazar. The firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in the
+young girl made her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle
+between father and daughter whenever her own death should make the
+latter mistress of the household. The poor woman had reached a point
+where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death
+itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the
+resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from
+encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future
+disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She
+hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she
+studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite,
+trusting that his daughter might continue to be to him an angel of
+love, while exercising over the family a protecting and conservative
+authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love upon her dear
+ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not willing to lower
+the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her into the
+secret dangers of his scientific passion before it became necessary to
+do so. She studied Marguerite's soul and character, seeking to
+discover if the girl's own nature would lead her to be a mother to her
+brothers and her sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+
+Madame Claes's last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly
+to the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the
+care of property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of
+the Absolute.
+
+The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+monotonous beating of Balthazar's foot, which he continued to trot,
+wholly unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was
+sitting beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid,
+convulsed face, turned now and again to her father, wondering at his
+indifference. Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw
+the Abbe de Solis leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing
+the court-yard.
+
+"Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel," said Felicie.
+
+"That good young man!" exclaimed Madame Claes; "I am glad to welcome
+him."
+
+Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother's lips. For
+the last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred
+mysterious feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts
+that had lain dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to
+Madame Claes on the occasion of his examining the pictures, there
+happened certain of those imperceptible events which wield so great an
+influence upon life; and their results were sufficiently important to
+necessitate a brief sketch of the two personages now first introduced
+into the history of this family.
+
+It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
+of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in
+the family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there,
+as elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration
+at the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+
+The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a
+withered face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the
+eyes. He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in
+a painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag,
+and obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at
+hand. His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a
+delicate, suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit
+of religious purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his
+vast learning, his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and
+things, had been successively a Dominican friar, the "grand
+penitencier" of Toledo, and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of
+Malines. If the French Revolution had not intervened, the influence of
+the Casa-Real family would have made him one of the highest
+dignitaries of the Church; but the grief he felt for the death of the
+young duke, Madame Claes's brother, who had been his pupil, turned him
+from active life, and he now devoted himself to the education of his
+nephew, who was made an orphan at an early age.
+
+After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to
+be near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm
+for Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind,
+led him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders,
+where Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and
+Illuminati made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of
+Catholics devoted to those ideas, he remained there,--all the more
+willingly because he was looked up to as a patriarch by this
+particular communion, which continued to follow the doctrines of the
+Mystics notwithstanding the censures of the Church upon Fenelon and
+Madame Guyon. His morals were rigid, his life exemplary, and he was
+believed to have visions. In spite of his own detachment from the
+things of life, his affection for his nephew made him careful of the
+young man's interests. When a work of charity was to be done, the old
+abbe put the faithful of his flock under contribution before having
+recourse to his own means; and his patriarchal authority was so well
+established, his motives so pure, his discernment so rarely at fault,
+that every one was ready to answer his appeal. To give an idea of the
+contrast between the uncle and the nephew, we may compare the old man
+to a willow on the borders of a stream, hollowed to a skeleton and
+barely alive, and the young man to a sweet-brier clustering with
+roses, whose erect and graceful stems spring up about the hoary trunk
+of the old tree as if they would support it.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at
+his side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate
+sensibility, of half-dreamy innocence,--those fleeting flowers of
+youth which bloom perennially in souls that are nourished on religious
+principles. The old priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his
+pupil, preparing him for the trials of life by constant study and a
+discipline that was almost cloisteral. Such an education, which would
+launch the youth unstained upon the world and render him happy,
+provided he were fortunate in his earliest affections, had endowed him
+with a purity of spirit which gave to his person something of the
+charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest eyes, veiling a strong and
+courageous soul, sent forth a light that vibrated in the soul as the
+tones of a crystal bell sound their undulations on the ear. His face,
+though regular, was expressive, and charmed the eye with its clear-cut
+outline, the harmony of its lines, and the perfect repose which came
+of a heart at peace. All was harmonious. His black hair, his brown
+eyes and eyebrows, heightened the effect of a white skin and a
+brilliant color. His voice was such as might have been expected from
+his beautiful face; and something feminine in his movements accorded
+well with the melody of its tones and with the tender brightness of
+his eyes. He seemed unaware of the charm he exercised by his modest
+silence, the half-melancholy reserve of his manner, and the respectful
+attentions he paid to his uncle.
+
+Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the
+old abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking
+for obstructions that might trip his uncle's feet and guiding him to a
+smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There
+was something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in
+the obedience that never cavilled at the old man's orders; it seemed
+as though there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had
+given him. When the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in
+their own home or in the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes
+lift his head with so much dignity, as if to assert his metal should
+any other man assail him, that men of honor were moved at the sight
+like artists before a glorious picture; for noble sentiments ring as
+loudly in the soul from living incarnations as from the imagery of
+art.
+
+Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de
+Solis was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a
+man, invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity.
+Entering hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times
+to hide their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in
+black and looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face
+of a young man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their
+mutual astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each
+other in their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again
+with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal.
+Marguerite took her mother's arm, and spoke to her to cover her
+confusion and find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck
+with a swan-like motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported
+his uncle on his arm. The light was cleverly arranged to give due
+value to the pictures, and the half-obscurity of the gallery
+encouraged those furtive glances which are the joy of timid natures.
+Neither went so far, even in thought, as the first note of love; yet
+both felt the mysterious trouble which stirs the heart, and is
+jealously kept secret in our youth from fastidiousness or modesty.
+
+The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed to
+overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon
+a child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they
+have thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or
+love, listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure
+flames already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an
+irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first
+perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the
+musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much
+more shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life? The
+first heart in which we draw the breath of love,--is it not our home,
+our native land? Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that
+Voice of music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty
+veil, and reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+
+When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an
+angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon
+Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute
+thought on the canvas with the living thought beside him. This
+involuntary and delightful homage was understood and treasured. The
+old abbe gravely praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him,
+but the youth and the maiden were silent.
+
+Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture
+gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders,
+all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this
+vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in
+Marguerite's mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a
+luminous ray when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame
+Claes. That voice, whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights
+into her heart, completed the revelation that had come to her,--a
+revelation which Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own
+profit; for it often happens that the man whom destiny employs to
+waken love in the heart of a young girl is ignorant of his work and
+leaves it unfinished. Marguerite bowed confusedly; her true farewell
+was in the glance which seemed unwilling to lose so pure and lovely a
+vision. Like a child she wanted her melody. Their parting took place
+at the foot of the old staircase near the parlor; and when Marguerite
+re-entered the room she watched the uncle and the nephew till the
+street-door closed upon them.
+
+Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which
+caused her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion
+observe her daughter's manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to
+the house on the occasion of her illness, she was too violently
+agitated to notice the color that rushed into Marguerite's face and
+betrayed the tumult of a virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By
+the time the old abbe was announced, Marguerite had taken up her
+sewing and appeared to give it such attention that she bowed to the
+uncle and nephew without looking at them. Monsieur Claes mechanically
+returned their salutation and left the room with the air of a man
+called away by his occupations. The good Dominican sat down beside
+Madame Claes and looked at her with one of those searching glances by
+which he penetrated the minds of others; the sight of Monsieur Claes
+and his wife was enough to make him aware of a catastrophe.
+
+"My children," said the mother, "go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+Emmanuel your father's tulips."
+
+Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie's arm and looked at the young
+man, who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion.
+When all four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other
+side, leaving Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young
+de Solis, led him to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the
+same manner year after year by Lemulquinier.
+
+"Do you love tulips?" asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+deep silence,--a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+
+"Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their
+beauties. They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber
+in which I live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that
+are softer to the eye."
+
+Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it
+was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness,
+the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+
+"Do you work very hard?" she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with
+a back, painted green. "Here," she continued, "the tulips are not so
+close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors
+are dazzling; they give pain."
+
+"Do I work hard?" replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+smoothed the gravel with his foot. "Yes; I work at many things. My
+uncle wished to make me a priest."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+
+"I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage
+to oppose my uncle's wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me,
+a poor orphan!"
+
+"What do you mean to be?" asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+gesture, "I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender
+admiration, "except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am
+studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I
+were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to
+live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could
+love. That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer
+a daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold
+and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy
+is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor
+teacher like me."
+
+"I have always called the daisies marguerites," she said.
+
+Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his
+feet. Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which
+he feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he
+said at last, "I dared not pronounce your name"--then he paused.
+
+"A teacher?" she said.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+taste for historical researches."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+That "ah!" so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave
+a foolish laugh and said:--
+
+"You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you."
+
+"My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I
+think," said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+
+"Your mother seems to me greatly changed," said Emmanuel.
+
+"She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings;
+and we can only try to share them with her."
+
+Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown
+to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of
+the price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to
+sell in Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the
+day when poverty should overtake her children. With much deliberation,
+and after weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the
+act as one of prudence. He took his leave to prepare at once for the
+sale, which he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur
+Claes in the estimation of others.
+
+The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with
+letters of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do
+a service to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures
+in the gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the
+ostensible sum of eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen
+thousand more which were paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The
+pictures were so well known that nothing was needed to complete the
+sale but an answer from Balthazar to the letter which Messieurs Happe
+and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel de Solis was commissioned by
+Claes to receive the price of the pictures, which were thereupon
+packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale from the people of
+Douai.
+
+Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he
+had borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his
+chemical researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its
+noblest ornament. Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret;
+he felt so sure of repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he
+reserved the right of redemption. In Josephine's eyes a hundred
+pictures were as nothing compared to domestic happiness and the
+satisfaction of her husband's mind; moreover, she refilled the gallery
+with other paintings taken from the reception-rooms, and to conceal
+the gaps which these left in the front house, she changed the
+arrangement of the furniture.
+
+When Balthazar's debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and
+his nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats
+reserved by Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the
+Dutch ducats, to which the events of the Continental war had given a
+commercial value. One hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were
+buried in the cellar of the house in which the abbe and his nephew
+resided.
+
+Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock
+he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of
+languor and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so
+completely absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had
+overtaken France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of
+the Bourbons, drew him from his laboratory; he was neither husband,
+father, nor citizen,--solely chemist.
+
+Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she
+was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own
+chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished
+joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed
+her, she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by
+declaring the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better
+suited to her condition. The bed in which the unfortunate woman ended
+her life was placed between the fireplace and a window looking on the
+garden. There she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training
+the souls of her young daughters, striving to leave within them the
+fire of her own. Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations,
+allowed maternal love to have its way. The mother now seemed the more
+delightful because her motherhood had blossomed late. Like all
+generous persons, she passed through sensitive phases of feeling that
+she mistook for remorse. Believing that she had defrauded her children
+of the tenderness that should have been theirs, she sought to redeem
+those imaginary wrongs; bestowing attentions and tender cares which
+made her precious to them; she longed to make her children live, as it
+were, within her heart; to shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to
+cherish them enough in the few remaining days to redeem the time
+during which she had neglected them. The sufferings of her mind gave
+to her words and her caresses a glowing warmth that issued from her
+soul. Her eyes caressed her children, her voice with its yearning
+intonations touched their hearts, her hand showered blessings on their
+heads.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX
+
+The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no
+longer received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more
+fetes on the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes's state of
+health seemed a sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of
+her husband's debts put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the
+political vicissitudes to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the
+Hundred-days, and the occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist
+and his researches completely out of people's minds. During those two
+years Douai was so often on the point of being taken, it was so
+constantly occupied either by the French or by the enemy, so many
+foreigners came there, so many of the country-people sought refuge
+within its walls, so many lives were in peril, so many catastrophes
+occurred, that each man thought only of himself.
+
+The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
+the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
+rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
+hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the
+strength to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words,
+invariably the same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence
+settled down upon the room. The monotony of this existence was broken
+only on the days when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the
+evening with Madame Claes.
+
+While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked
+with Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their
+innocent joy, not allowing them to see how painful and yet how
+soothing to her wounded spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin
+love, murmuring in fitful words from heart to heart. The inflection of
+their voices, to them so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a
+glance of mutual understanding surprised between the two threw her,
+half-dead as she was, back to the young and happy past which gave such
+bitterness to the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive
+delicacy of feeling repressed the sweet half-childish play of love,
+lest it should hurt the saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively
+divined.
+
+No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own,
+a nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them,
+and in which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of
+their growth, and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their
+development. There are passions ardently conceived which remain
+ardent, like that of Madame Claes for her husband: there are
+sentiments on which all life has smiled; these retain their
+spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time of joy, seasons that never fail
+of laughter or of fetes; but there are other loves, framed in melancholy,
+circled by distress, whose pleasures are painful, costly, burdened by
+fears, poisoned by remorse, or blackened by despair. The love in the
+heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel, as yet unknown to them for love, the
+sentiment that budded into life beneath the gloomy arches of the
+picture-gallery, beside the stern old abbe, in a still and silent
+moment, that love so grave and so discreet, yet rich in tender depths,
+in secret delights that were luscious to the taste as stolen grapes
+snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in coming years the
+sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its birth.
+
+Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
+they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
+deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
+shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
+becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium of
+communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
+supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
+hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
+distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother's
+sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of
+unuttered promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of
+Raphael painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither
+avowed; they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not
+know what wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their
+heads. They doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow
+them, they stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not
+daring to say to each other, "Shall we end our days together?"
+
+The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
+comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
+through Balthazar. However painful her husband's presence might be to
+her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
+he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
+moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying
+woman would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and
+her daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they
+forgave him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some
+sudden illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
+only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
+Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
+their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of
+the being he had once so passionately loved.
+
+When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner,
+Madame Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up
+her strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face
+blushed brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health.
+Balthazar came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color
+on her cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, "My dear
+wife, how are you to-day?" she answered, "Better, dear friend," and
+made him think she would be up and recovered on the morrow. His
+preoccupation was so great that he accepted this reply, and believed
+the illness of which his wife was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to
+the eyes of the world, in his alone she was living.
+
+A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning,
+and shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife
+only in presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who
+came to visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These
+two beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at
+rare intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate
+unreserve which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a
+time when even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now
+a boon to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of
+separation, which might have killed her had she been truly living. Her
+bodily pain became so great that there were times when she was joyful
+in the thought that he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay
+watching Balthazar in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his
+own way, she lived in the happiness she had procured for him,--a
+shadowy joy, and yet it satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if
+she were loved, she forced herself to believe it; and she glided over
+that icy surface, not daring to rest her weight upon it lest it should
+break and drown her soul in a gulf of awful nothingness.
+
+No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was
+slowly consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in
+this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first
+weeks of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the
+close of February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who,
+in the words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+
+"Madame," said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+hear the conversation, "Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
+protect the future of your children."
+
+Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling;
+then she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of
+her head which affected him.
+
+His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had
+yielded herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was
+like the wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and
+a mere pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and
+so courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
+remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
+and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+
+Marguerite's management of the household since her mother's illness
+had amply fulfilled the dying woman's hopes that Madame Claes was able
+to look upon the future of the family without absolute despair,
+confident that she herself would live again in this strong and loving
+angel. Both women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must
+now be made between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the
+mother at the daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times,
+as Madame Claes rested from her writing, Marguerite said: "Mother?"
+then she dropped as if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last
+thoughts, did not ask the meaning of the interrogation. At last,
+Madame Claes wished to seal the letter; Marguerite held the taper,
+turning aside her head that she might not see the superscription.
+
+"You can read it, my child," said the mother, in a heart-rending
+voice.
+
+The young girl read the words, "To my daughter Marguerite."
+
+"We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile," said Madame
+Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+
+Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for
+several hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were
+kneeling by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had
+been brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six
+months was professor of history and philosophy.
+
+"Dear children, we must part!" she cried. "You have never forsaken me,
+never! and he who--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Monsieur Emmanuel," said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her
+mother's face, "go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse."
+
+Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of
+the urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, "I will come."
+
+"Emmanuel," said Madame Claes when he returned to her, "take my sons
+away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
+sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand."
+
+When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite,
+who understood her and sent Felicie away.
+
+"I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma," said Marguerite
+who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased the
+wound Pierquin had given. "I have had no money for the household
+expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months' wages to the
+servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
+dare to do so. You don't know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
+gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?"
+
+"He never told me!" exclaimed Madame Claes. "My God! thou callest me
+to thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?"
+
+She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to
+her eyes.
+
+"Marguerite," she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, "here
+is a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my
+death, when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you
+are without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father,
+but take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a
+few hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be
+economical. Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your
+father,--and it may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in
+searching for a secret whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to
+his family, and he will no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it
+of you,--should that time come, treat him with the tenderness of a
+daughter, strive to reconcile the interests of which you will be the
+sole protector with the duty which you owe to a father, to a great man
+who sacrificed his happiness and his life to the glory of his family;
+he can only do wrong in act, his intentions are noble, his heart is
+full of love; you will see him once more kind and affectionate--YOU!
+Marguerite, it is my duty to say these words to you on the borders of
+the grave. If you wish to soften the anguish of my death, promise me,
+my child, to take my place beside your father; to cause him no grief;
+never to reproach him; never to condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate
+guardian of the home until--his work accomplished--he is again the
+master of his family."
+
+"I understand you, dear mother," said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+eyelids of the dying woman. "I will do as you wish."
+
+"Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
+management of the property and the household. If you married, your
+husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
+family and disturb your father's life."
+
+Marguerite looked at her mother and said, "Have you nothing else to
+say to me about my marriage?"
+
+"Can you hesitate, my child?" cried the dying woman in alarm.
+
+"No," the daughter answered; "I promise to obey you."
+
+"Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you," said the mother,
+shedding hot tears. "Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
+Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
+guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
+sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
+him--too much."
+
+She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
+gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
+violent.
+
+A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
+and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
+ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
+looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
+
+"Where is my husband?"
+
+Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
+uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha,
+in spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the
+staircase and through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of
+the laboratory.
+
+"Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer
+the last sacraments," she cried with the violence of indignation.
+
+"I am coming," answered Balthazar.
+
+Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was
+following him. Madame Claes's eyes never left the parlor door, but her
+husband did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he
+entered, Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?" she said to him with an
+angelic tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+
+"I have done it!" he cried joyfully; "Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently
+the principle of--"
+
+A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his
+senses.
+
+"What did they tell me?" he demanded. "Are you worse? What is the
+matter?"
+
+"This is the matter, monsieur," whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
+at his conduct; "your wife is dying, and you have killed her."
+
+Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
+went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the
+court-yard. Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife,
+and a few tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+"You are dying, and I have killed you!" he said. "What does he mean?"
+
+"My husband," she answered, "I only lived in your love, and you have
+taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did."
+
+"Leave us," said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
+"Have I for one moment ceased to love you?" he went on, sitting down
+beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+
+"My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I
+have not been able to bear the contrast between our early married
+life, so full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when
+you are not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the
+body, has its functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to
+the family, to all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of
+our early married days; such joys must cease in the after-time of
+life, but they ripen into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence
+unlimited, the tender habits of affection: you have torn those
+treasures from me! I go in time: we live together no longer; you hide
+your thoughts and actions from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I
+ever given you one word, one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet,
+you have sold your last pictures, you have sold even the wine in your
+cellar, you are borrowing money on your property, and have said no
+word to me. Ah! I go from life weary of life. If you are doing wrong,
+if you delude yourself in following the unattainable, have I not shown
+you that my love could share your faults, could walk beside you and be
+happy, though you led me in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,
+--that was my glory; it is now my death. Balthazar, my illness has
+lasted long; it began on the day when here, in this place where I am
+about to die, you showed me that Science was more to you than Family.
+And now the end has come; your wife is dying, and your fortune lost.
+Fortune and wife were yours,--you could do what you willed with your
+own; but on the day of my death my property goes to my children, and
+you cannot touch it; what will then become of you? I am telling you
+the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far; when I am gone will
+anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now your life? If you
+have sacrificed your wife, your children will count but little in the
+scale; for I must be just and own you loved me above all. Two millions
+and six years of toil you have cast into the gulf,--and what have you
+found?"
+
+At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid
+his face.
+
+"Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children," continued the
+dying woman. "You are called in derision 'Claes the alchemist'; soon
+it will be 'Claes the madman.' For myself, I believe in you. I know
+you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius
+is mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be
+unhappy with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be
+ruined. I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me
+consolation for my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less
+bitter to me, let me be certain that my children will not want for
+bread-- Ah, nothing, nothing, not even you, can calm my fears."
+
+"I swear," said Claes, "to--"
+
+"No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath," she said,
+interrupting him. "You owed us your protection; we have been without
+it seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither
+wife nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His
+virtues are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe,
+he cannot belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the
+earth about him, like a majestic tree--and I, poor plant, I could not
+rise to the height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for
+this last day to tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in
+the lightnings of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let
+these words echo in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath.
+The wife is dead, dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of
+her feelings, of her joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have
+lived so long? But those poor children did not forsake me! they have
+grown beside my anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare
+my children!"
+
+"Lemulquinier!" cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+
+The old man appeared.
+
+"Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be
+careful, but destroy all. I renounce Science," he said to his wife.
+
+"Too late," she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. "Marguerite!" she
+cried, feeling herself about to die.
+
+Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
+saw her mother's eyes now glazing.
+
+"MARGUERITE!" repeated the dying woman.
+
+The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a
+dying bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die;
+the vital forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her
+husband.
+
+Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
+foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
+virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
+Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the
+daughter judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in
+his daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love
+with which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and
+gave to her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must
+ever hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his
+attendant genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion,
+denying him the strength to carry his repentance into action: he
+feared himself.
+
+When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
+minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now
+departed. The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor,
+where the noble woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had
+the courage to enter it.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X
+
+Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals:
+every hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words;
+it paves the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of
+soul by ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers,
+anathematizes those who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion
+(the hypocrite!) in weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+
+The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a
+few flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist,
+doing homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and
+spades. Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,--the fi, fo, fum of
+collective grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with neither
+more nor less of feeling, at all hours and in every town in France,
+--they proceeded to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin was
+the first to observe that the death of this excellent woman was a mercy,
+for her husband had made her unhappy; and it was even more fortunate
+for her children: she was unable while living to refuse her money to
+the husband she adored; but now that she was dead, Claes was debarred
+from touching it. Thereupon all present calculated the fortune of that
+poor Madame Claes, wondered how much she had laid by (had she, in
+fact, laid by anything?), made an inventory of her jewels, rummaged in
+her wardrobe, peeped into her drawers, while the afflicted family were
+still weeping and praying around her death-bed.
+
+Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes's
+possessions in her own right--to use the notarial phrase--might still
+be recovered, and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of
+francs; basing this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,--whose
+timber, counting the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval
+growths, and the recent plantations, had immensely increased in value
+during the last twelve years,--and partly on Balthazar's own property,
+of which enough remained to "cover" the claims of his children, if the
+liquidation of their mother's fortune did not yield sufficient to
+release him. Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin's slang, "a
+four-hundred-thousand-franc girl." "But," he added, "if she doesn't
+marry,--a step which would of course separate her interests and permit
+us to sell the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the
+minor children and reinvest it where the father can't lay hands on it,
+--Claes is likely to ruin them all."
+
+Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy
+to win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the
+lawyer the compliment of suggesting that he might be the man.
+Pierquin, however, found so many good reasons to reject the suggested
+matches as unworthy of Marguerite's position, that the confabulators
+glanced at each other and smiled, and took malicious pleasure in
+prolonging this truly provincial method of annoyance. Pierquin had
+already decided that Madame Claes's death would have a favorable
+effect upon his suit, and he began mentally to cut up the body in his
+own interests.
+
+"That good woman," he said to himself as he went home to bed, "was as
+proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey,
+hey! why couldn't I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere
+Claes is drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after
+convincing Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her
+brothers and sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be
+glad to get rid of a girl who is likely to thwart him."
+
+He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded
+for his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the
+provinces there was certainly not a better brought-up or more
+delicately lovely young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her
+grace, were like those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to
+name lest he should betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments
+were lofty, her principles religious, she would undoubtedly make him a
+faithful wife: moreover, she not only flattered the vanity which
+influences every man more or less in the choice of a wife, but she
+gratified his pride by the high consideration which her family, doubly
+ennobled, enjoyed in Flanders,--a consideration which her husband of
+course would share.
+
+The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several
+thousand-franc notes, which he offered with great friendliness to
+Balthazar, so as to relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst of
+his grief. Touched by this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he
+thought, praise his goodness and his personal qualities to Marguerite.
+In this he was mistaken. Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was
+a very natural action, and their sorrow was too absorbing to let them
+even think of the lawyer.
+
+Balthazar's despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed
+to blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,--less on
+account of the Science which might have excused him, than for the
+remorse which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by
+appearances: it takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic
+worth of the article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species
+of enjoyment, which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its
+thirst for emotions it acquits without judging the man who raises a
+laugh, or he who makes it weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+
+Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority
+with docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of
+her skin, just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the
+gentleness and patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs
+of feminine courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels
+appointed to shed peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving
+palms. But although she trained herself, through a premature
+perception of duty, to hide her personal grief, it was none the less
+bitter; her calm exterior was not in keeping with the deep trouble of
+her thoughts, and she was destined to undergo, too early in life,
+those terrible outbursts of feeling which no heart is wholly able to
+subdue: her father was to hold her incessantly under the pressure of
+natural youthful generosity on the one hand, and the dictates of
+imperious duty on the other. The cares which came upon her the very
+day of her mother's death threw her into a struggle with the interests
+of life at an age when young girls are thinking only of its pleasures.
+Dreadful discipline of suffering, which is never lacking to angelic
+natures!
+
+The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few
+days after Madame Claes's death he took occasion to speak to
+Marguerite, and began operations with a cleverness which might have
+succeeded if love had not given her the power of clear insight and
+saved her from mistaking appearances that were all the more specious
+because Pierquin displayed his natural kindheartedness,--the
+kindliness of a notary who thinks himself loving while he protects a
+client's money. Relying on his rather distant relationship and his
+constant habit of managing the business and sharing the secrets of the
+Claes family, sure of the esteem and friendship of the father, greatly
+assisted by the careless inattention of that servant of science who
+took no thought for the marriage of his daughter, and not suspecting
+that Marguerite could prefer another,--Pierquin unguardedly enabled
+her to form a judgment on a suit in which there was no passion except
+that of self-interest, always odious to a young soul, and which he was
+not clever enough to conceal. It was he who on this occasion was
+naively above-board, it was she who dissimulated,--simply because he
+thought he was dealing with a defenceless girl, and wholly
+misconceived the privileges of weakness.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking
+about the paths of the little garden, "you know my heart, you
+understand how truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which
+absorb you at this moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer;
+I live by my heart only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests
+of others when I would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which
+make life happy. I suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of
+subjects so discordant with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I
+have thought much about you during the last few days. It is evident
+that through a fatal delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister
+and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to save your family from
+complete ruin?"
+
+"What must I do?" she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+
+"Marry," answered Pierquin.
+
+"I shall not marry," she said.
+
+"Yes, you will marry," replied the notary, "when you have soberly
+thought over the critical position in which you are placed."
+
+"How can my marriage save--"
+
+"Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin," he exclaimed,
+interrupting her. "Marriage will emancipate you."
+
+"Why should I be emancipated?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your
+property, my dear little cousin," said the lawyer in a tone of
+triumph. "If you marry you take your share of your mother's property.
+To give it to you, the whole property must be liquidated; to do that,
+it becomes necessary to sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the
+proceeds will be capitalized, and your father, as guardian, will be
+compelled to invest the fortune of his children in such a way that
+Chemistry can't get hold of it."
+
+"And if I do not marry, what will happen?" she asked.
+
+"Well," said the notary, "your father will manage your estate as he
+pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the
+timber of the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as
+the little Saint Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred
+thousand francs; but from one day to another you are not sure your
+father won't cut it down, and then your thirteen hundred acres are not
+worth three hundred thousand francs. Isn't it better to avoid this
+almost certain danger by at once compelling the division of property
+on your marriage? If the forest is sold now, while Chemistry has gone
+to sleep, your father will put the proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The
+Funds are at 59; those dear children will get nearly five thousand
+francs a year for every fifty thousand francs: and, inasmuch as the
+property of minors cannot be sold out, your brothers and sister will
+find their fortunes doubled in value by the time they come of age.
+Whereas, in the other case,--faith, no one knows what may happen: your
+father has already impaired your mother's property; we shall find out
+the deficit when we come to make the inventory. If he is in debt to
+her estate, you will take a mortgage on his, and in that way something
+may be recovered--"
+
+"For shame!" said Marguerite. "It would be an outrage on my father. It
+is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have
+forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children," she
+continued, giving way to tears of distress. "You misunderstand him,
+Monsieur Pierquin."
+
+"But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry--"
+
+"We are ruined; is that what you mean?"
+
+"Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite," he said, taking her
+hand which he placed upon his heart, "I should fail of my duty if I
+did not persist in this matter. Your interests alone--"
+
+"Monsieur," said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, "the true
+interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so."
+
+"Cousin," he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+escaping him, "you commit suicide; you fling your mother's property
+into a gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know
+not how I love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball,
+three years ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it
+speaks to you of your own interests, Marguerite." He paused. "Yes, we
+must call a family council and emancipate you--without consulting
+you," he added.
+
+"But what is it to be emancipated?"
+
+"It is to enjoy your own rights."
+
+"If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+marry? and whom should I marry?"
+
+Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money,
+that Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised
+tenderness.
+
+"You would marry the person who--pleases you--the most," he said. "A
+husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business. You
+are now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him
+all alone?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister
+when the time comes."
+
+"Pshaw! the obstinate creature," thought Pierquin. "No, you will not
+resist him," he said aloud.
+
+"Let us end the subject," she said.
+
+"Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I
+will prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster
+which all the town foresees."
+
+"I thank you for the interest you take in me," she answered; "but I
+entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+pain to my father."
+
+Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring,
+his glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry
+in which Emmanuel's sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be
+said, or what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose
+effects never deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the
+passionate gestures of a lover may be imitated; a young girl can be
+deluded by a clever comedian; but to succeed, the man must be alone in
+the field. If the young girl has another soul beside her whose pulses
+vibrate in unison with hers, she is able to distinguish the
+expressions of a true love. Emmanuel, like Marguerite, felt the
+influence of the chords which, from the time of their first meeting
+had gathered ominously about their heads, hiding from their eyes the
+blue skies of love. His feeling for the Elect of his heart was an
+idolatry which the total absence of hope rendered gentle and
+mysterious in its manifestations. Socially too far removed from
+Mademoiselle Claes by his want of fortune, with nothing but a noble
+name to offer her, he saw no chance of ever being her husband. Yet he
+had always hoped for certain encouragements which Marguerite refused
+to give before the failing eyes of her dying mother. Both equally
+pure, they had never said to one another a word of love. Their joys
+were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They trembled apart, though
+together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope. They seemed
+to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged to
+the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the
+sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love
+that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed in
+each other's hearts that both were ready to make the greatest
+sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could
+expect to taste.
+
+Since Madame Claes's death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
+The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the
+first, were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears.
+Marguerite's reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise
+exacted by her mother. With more freedom of action, she nevertheless
+became more distant. Emmanuel shared his beloved's grief,
+comprehending that the slightest word or wish of love at such a time
+transgressed the laws of the heart. Their love was therefore more
+concealed than it had ever been. These tender souls sounded the same
+note: held apart by grief, as formerly by the timidities of youth and
+by respect for the sufferings of the mother, they clung to the
+magnificent language of the eyes, the mute eloquence of devoted
+actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine harmonies of youth,
+the first steps of a love still in its infancy. Emmanuel came every
+morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he never entered the
+dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring a letter from
+Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in. His first glance at
+the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic thoughts; it told her
+that he suffered under these conventional restraints, that he never
+left her, he was always with her, he shared her grief. He shed the
+tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear one by a look that was
+marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart lived so completely
+in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness which he believed to
+be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached herself for not
+generously holding out her hand and saying, "Let us at least be
+friends."
+
+Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the
+unreflecting patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary
+rules of the multitude when judging of women. He believed that the
+words marriage, freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind,
+would geminate and flower into wishes by which he could profit; he
+imagined that her coldness was mere dissimulation. But surround her as
+he would with gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways
+of a man accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families
+with a high hand. He discoursed to her in those platitudes of
+consolation common to his profession, which crawl like snails over the
+suffering mind, leaving behind them a trail of barren words which
+profane its sanctity. His tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped
+his feigned melancholy at the door when he put on his overshoes, or
+took his umbrella. He used the tone his long intimacy authorized as an
+instrument to work himself still further into the bosom of the family,
+and bring Marguerite to a marriage which the whole town was beginning
+to foresee. The true, devoted, respectful love formed a striking
+contrast to its selfish, calculating semblance. Each man's conduct was
+homogenous: one feigned a passion and seized every advantage to gain
+the prize; the other hid his love and trembled lest he should betray
+his devotion.
+
+Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the
+same day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom
+she had any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which
+she was condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to
+those who might think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a
+fine morning in April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur
+Claes was going out. The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to
+Balthazar that he spent part of every day in walking about the
+ramparts. Emmanuel made a motion as if to follow him, then he
+hesitated, seemed to gather up his courage, looked at Marguerite and
+remained. The young girl felt sure that he wished to speak with her,
+and asked him to go into the garden; then she sent Felicie to Martha,
+who was sewing in the antechamber on the upper floor, and seated
+herself on a garden-seat in full view of her sister and the old
+duenna.
+
+"Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by
+science," began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed
+the court-yard. "Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man
+who has lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he
+gazes without seeing anything."
+
+"Every sorrow has its own expression," said Marguerite, checking her
+tears. "What is it you wish to say to me?" she added after a pause,
+coldly and with dignity.
+
+"Mademoiselle," answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, "I scarcely
+know if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think
+only of my desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a
+teacher to be interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother
+Gabriel is over fifteen; he is in the second class; it is now
+necessary to direct his studies in the line of whatever future career
+he may take up. It is for your father to decide what that career shall
+be: if he gives the matter no thought, the injury to Gabriel would be
+serious. But then, again, would it not mortify your father if you
+showed him that he is neglecting his son's interests? Under these
+circumstances, could you not yourself consult Gabriel as to his
+tastes, and help him to choose a career, so that later, if his father
+should think of making him a public officer, an administrator, a
+soldier, he might be prepared with some special training? I do not
+suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish to bring Gabriel
+up in idleness."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Marguerite; "when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often
+said we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel
+ought to have a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me,
+what career is best for a man to choose?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, "Gabriel is at
+the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the
+Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge
+which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can
+choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus,
+without compromising his future, you will have saved a great deal of
+time. Men who leave the Ecole with honors are sought after on all
+sides; the school turns out statesmen, diplomats, men of science,
+engineers, generals, sailors, magistrates, manufacturers, and bankers.
+There is nothing extraordinary in the son of a rich or noble family
+preparing himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on this course I
+shall ask you to--will you grant my request? Say yes!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Let me be his tutor," he answered, trembling.
+
+Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and
+said, "Yes"--and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:--
+
+"How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have
+thought for us. I thank you."
+
+Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not
+to show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to
+his eyes.
+
+"I will bring both boys to see you," he said, when he was a little
+calmer; "to-morrow is a holiday."
+
+He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when
+he had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door
+of the dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+
+After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had
+sat that morning.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Balthazar, "I have come to-night to talk
+to you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your
+wife."
+
+"I keep no account of time," said Balthazar, wiping away the tears
+that came at the word "decease."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, "how can
+you?"
+
+"But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the
+limits of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you
+and your co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he
+must make an inventory of his property within forty-five days of his
+wife's decease, so as to render in his accounts at the end of that
+time. It is necessary to know the value of his property before
+deciding whether to accept it as sufficient security, or whether we
+must fall back on the legal rights of minors."
+
+Marguerite rose.
+
+"Do not go away, my dear cousin," continued Pierquin; "my words
+concern you--you and your father both. You know how truly I share your
+grief, but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If
+you do not, every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am
+only doing my duty as the family lawyer."
+
+"He is right," said Claes.
+
+"The time expires in two days," resumed Pierquin; "and I must begin
+the inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the
+legacy-tax which the public treasurer will come here and demand.
+Treasurers have no hearts; they don't trouble themselves about
+feelings; they fasten their claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore
+for the next two days my clerk and I will be here from ten till four
+with Monsieur Raparlier, the public appraiser. After we get through
+the town property we shall go into the country. As for the forest of
+Waignies, we shall be obliged to hold a consultation about that. Now
+let us turn to another matter. We must call a family council and
+appoint a guardian to protect the interests of the minor children.
+Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your nearest relative; but he has now
+become a Belgian. You ought," continued Pierquin, addressing
+Balthazar, "to write to him on this matter; you can then find out if
+he has any intention of settling in France, where he has a fine
+property. Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to move into
+French Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making up the
+council with the other near relatives."
+
+"What is the use of an inventory?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts
+and its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family
+council, acting on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it
+sees fit."
+
+"Pierquin," said Claes, rising from the bench, "do all that is
+necessary to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the
+distress of selling the things that belonged to my dear--" he was
+unable to continue; but he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of
+such deep feeling that Marguerite took her father's hand and kissed
+it.
+
+"To-morrow, then," said Pierquin.
+
+"Come to breakfast," said Claes; then he seemed to gather his
+scattered senses together and exclaimed: "But in my marriage contract,
+which was drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from
+the obligation of making an inventory, in order that she might not be
+annoyed by it: it is very probable that I was equally released--"
+
+"Oh, what happiness!" cried Marguerite. "It would have been so
+distressing to us."
+
+"Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow," said the
+notary, rather confused.
+
+"Then you did not know of this?" said Marguerite.
+
+This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused
+to continue it after the young girl's comment.
+
+"The devil is in it!" he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+"That man's wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,
+--just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against
+him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those children.
+I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding with old
+Conyncks, and here's the end of it! I shall lose ground with
+Marguerite, for she will certainly ask her father why I wanted an
+inventory of the property, which she now sees was not necessary; and
+Claes will tell her that notaries have a passion for writing
+documents, that we are lawyers above all, above cousins or friends or
+relatives, and all such stuff as that."
+
+He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+themselves by sensitiveness.
+
+Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore,
+was done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the
+matter of property.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI
+
+Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis,
+worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass
+the necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique.
+Marguerite and Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer
+to their father's country place as a measure of economy. Monsieur
+Claes attended to his business affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a
+considerable sum of money on his property, and went to see the forest
+at Waignies.
+
+About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him
+a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he
+was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled
+bravely against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset
+him; he forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think
+of it. Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind
+to his researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled
+his passion which soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he
+was really bound not to continue his researches, and remembered that
+his wife had refused his oath. Though he had pledged his word to
+himself that he would never pursue the solution of the great Problem,
+might he not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw
+success? He was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant
+idea contracts a certain peevish fixedness which is the first stage of
+monomania.
+
+Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace which
+Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries and
+scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of various
+countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists
+themselves, towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted
+to the higher sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat,
+electricity, galvanism, magnetism were all different effects of the
+same cause, and that the difference existing between substances
+hitherto considered simple must be produced by varying proportions of
+an unknown principle. The fear that some other chemist might effect
+the reduction of metals and discover the constituent principle of
+electricity,--two achievements which would lead to the solution of the
+chemical Absolute,--increased what the people of Douai called a mania,
+and drove his desires to a paroxysm conceivable to those who devote
+themselves to the sciences, or who have ever known the tyranny of
+ideas.
+
+Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion
+all the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite,
+who watched every evidence of her father's state of mind, opened the
+long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+which her mother's death had caused, and succeeded for a time in
+re-awaking her father's grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf
+to the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She
+determined to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its
+distractions. Several good marriages were proposed to her, which
+occupied Claes's mind, but to all of them she replied that she should
+not marry until after she was twenty-five. But in spite of his
+daughter's efforts, in spite of his remorseful struggles, Balthazar,
+at the beginning of the winter, returned secretly to his researches.
+It was difficult, however, to hide his operations from the inquisitive
+women in the kitchen; and one morning Martha, while dressing
+Marguerite, said to her:--
+
+"Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier
+--who is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the
+cross--has gone back to the garret. There's monsieur on the high-road
+to hell. Pray God he mayn't kill you as he killed my poor mistress."
+
+"It is not possible!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"Come and see the signs of their traffic."
+
+Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising
+from the flue of the laboratory.
+
+"I shall be twenty-one in a few months," she thought, "and I shall
+know how to oppose the destruction of our property."
+
+In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
+for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
+happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
+more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth
+in his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a
+man profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he
+worked night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did
+not know how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+
+Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy
+of a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes
+never noticed the change which reduced the household living to the
+merest necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then
+he only left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before
+he went to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his
+daughters without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go
+upstairs they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically
+to kiss him on both cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great
+domestic misfortunes had Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the
+authority of a mother, and if, moreover, she were not protected by a
+secret love from the dangers of so much liberty.
+
+Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+would soon be complete. Balthazar's rural estates, which yielded
+sixteen thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred
+thousand, were now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three
+hundred thousand francs; for, in order to recommence his researches,
+Claes had borrowed a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly
+enough to pay the interest of the mortgages; but, with the
+improvidence of a man who is the slave of an idea, he made over the
+income of his farm lands to Marguerite for the expenses of the
+household, and the notary calculated that three years would suffice to
+bring matters to a crisis, when the law would step in and eat up all
+that Balthazar had not squandered. Marguerite's coldness brought
+Pierquin to a state of almost hostile indifference. To give himself an
+appearance in the eyes of the world of having renounced her hand, he
+frequently remarked of the Claes family in a tone of compassion:--
+
+"Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well,
+it can't be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal
+means which might have rescued them from poverty."
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in
+Douai, thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits
+which made him worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two
+young girls, who called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as
+their father had gone to bed. Emmanuel's gentle rap at the street-door
+was never missing. For the last three months, encouraged by the
+gracious, though mute gratitude with which Marguerite now accepted his
+attentions, he became at his ease, and was seen for what he was. The
+brightness of his pure spirit shone like a flawless diamond;
+Marguerite learned to understand its strength and its constancy when
+she saw how inexhaustible was the source from which it came. She loved
+to watch the unfolding, one by one, of the blossoms of his heart,
+whose perfume she had already breathed. Each day Emmanuel realized
+some one of Marguerite's hopes, and illumined the enchanted regions of
+love with new lights that chased away the clouds and brought to view
+the serene heavens, giving color to the fruitful riches hidden away in
+the shadow of their lives. More at his ease, the young man could
+display the seductive qualities of his heart until now discreetly
+hidden, the expansive gaiety of his age, the simplicity which comes of
+a life of study, the treasures of a delicate mind that life has not
+adulterated, the innocent joyousness which goes so well with loving
+youth. His soul and Marguerite's understood each other better; they
+went together to the depths of their hearts and found in each the same
+thoughts,--pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those
+the legends tell of beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers.
+They made themselves known to one another by an interchange of
+thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs, in both, of
+exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but not
+without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the
+sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of
+anguish and renunciation on which she had entered. This artless,
+progressive love was her support. In all his testimonies of affection
+Emmanuel showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet yet
+subtile mind which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of
+a diamond relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the
+stone,--adorable wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a
+woman pliant to the artistic hand that gives new life to old, old
+forms, and refreshes with novel modulations the phrases of love. Love
+is not only a sentiment, it is an art. Some simple word, a trifling
+vigilance, a nothing, reveals to a woman the great, the divine artist
+who shall touch her heart and yet not blight it. The more Emmanuel was
+free to utter himself, the more charming were the expressions of his
+love.
+
+"I have tried to get here before Pierquin," he said to Marguerite one
+evening. "He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it
+from me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at
+Waignies to speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are
+already felled, and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received
+three hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the
+price, which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to
+clear off his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred
+thousand francs of the three hundred thousand still due to him on the
+purchase-money."
+
+Pierquin entered at this moment.
+
+"Ah! my dear cousin," he said, "you are ruined. I told you how it
+would be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an
+insatiable appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your
+family guardian, Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam,
+and Claes has seized the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all
+wrong. I have written to Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too
+late; everything will be squandered. You will be obliged to sue your
+father. The suit can't be long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur
+Conyncks has no alternative but to institute proceedings; the law
+requires it. This is the result of your obstinacy. Do you now see my
+prudence, and how devoted I was to your interests?"
+
+"I bring you some good news, mademoiselle," said young de Solis in his
+gentle voice. "Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique.
+The difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed."
+
+Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:--
+
+"My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+Gabriel's outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard," she
+added, kissing her sister's forehead.
+
+"To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days," said
+Emmanuel; "he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November."
+
+"My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing," said the lawyer, eyeing
+the professor from head to foot; "for he will have to make his own
+way. But, my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of
+the family: will you listen to what I say this time?"
+
+"No," she said, "not if it relates to marriage."
+
+"Then what will you do?"
+
+"I?--nothing."
+
+"But you are of age."
+
+"I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me," she
+added, "which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+father and to the honor of the family?"
+
+"My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+does, I will call again."
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Marguerite.
+
+"The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself," thought the
+notary. "Adieu, mademoiselle," he said aloud. "Monsieur, my respects
+to you"; and he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+
+"I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have
+consulted an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle," said
+Emmanuel, in a hesitating voice. "If you will allow me, I will go to
+Amsterdam to-morrow and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear
+Marguerite--"
+
+He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile
+and a tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He
+paused, looking at Felicie and Martha.
+
+"Speak before my sister," said Marguerite. "She is so docile and
+courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned
+to our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see
+for herself how necessary courage is to us."
+
+The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew
+some pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+
+"Leave us, Martha."
+
+"Dear Marguerite," said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of
+his voice, "I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers
+who still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled
+timber. To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name of
+Monsieur Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an
+injunction upon them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will
+have returned, the family council can be called together, and Gabriel
+put in possession of his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and
+your brother being thus authorized to use those rights, you will
+demand your share in the proceeds of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot
+refuse you the two hundred thousand francs on which the injunction
+will have been put; as to the remaining hundred thousand which is due
+to you, you must obtain a mortgage on this house. Monsieur Conyncks
+will demand securities for the three hundred thousand belonging to
+Felicie and Jean. Under these circumstances your father will be
+obliged to mortgage his property on the plain of Orchies, which he has
+already encumbered to the amount of three hundred thousand francs. The
+law gives a retrospective priority to the claims of minors; and that
+will save you. Monsieur Claes's hands will be tied for the future;
+your property becomes inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his
+own estates because they will be held as security for other sums.
+Moreover, the whole can be done quietly, without scandal or legal
+proceedings. Your father will be forced to greater prudence in making
+his researches, even if he cannot be persuaded to relinquish them
+altogether."
+
+"Yes," said Marguerite, "but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain
+a mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live
+here. The proceeds of my father's property in the country will pay the
+interest on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but
+how are we to live?"
+
+"In the first place," said Emmanuel, "by investing the fifty thousand
+francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get,
+according to present rates, more than four thousand francs' income,
+which will suffice to pay your brother's board and lodging and all his
+other expenses in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is
+of age, therefore you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it,
+and you will have one expense the less. Besides, you will have your
+own fifty thousand."
+
+"My father will ask me for them," she said in a frightened tone; "and
+I shall not be able to refuse him."
+
+"Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing
+yourself. Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name: it
+will bring you twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who
+are emancipated cannot sell property without permission of the family
+council; you will thus gain three years' peace of mind. By that time
+your father will either have solved his problem or renounced it; and
+Gabriel, then of age, will reinvest the money in your own name."
+
+Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which
+she did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see
+this pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought
+with him to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of
+minors; she quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural
+penetration of women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+
+Gabriel came home to his father's house on the following day. When
+Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his
+admission to the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor
+with a wave of his hand, and said:--
+
+"I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science."
+
+"Oh, my brother," cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+laboratory, "work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass
+your time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits
+which ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly
+three thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for
+your pocket-money; that is surely enough."
+
+"I will answer for him," said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on
+his pupil's shoulder.
+
+A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite, had
+obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely
+proposed by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to
+face with the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense of
+honor allowed no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the
+timber to which he had consented at a moment when he was harassed by
+creditors, submitted to all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair
+the almost involuntary wrong that he had done to his children, he
+signed the deeds in a preoccupied way. He was now as careless and
+improvident as a Negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop of
+brandy, and cries for her at night. He gave no thought to even the
+immediate future, and never asked himself what resources he would have
+when his last ducat was melted up. He pursued his work and continued
+his purchases, apparently unaware that he was now no more than the
+titular owner of his house and lands, and that he could not, thanks to
+the severity of the laws, raise another penny upon a property of which
+he was now, as it were, the legal guardian.
+
+The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters
+paid the costs of Jean's education and met all the expenses of the
+household out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum
+placed in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name, which he punctually
+remitted to them. Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in
+December of that year.
+
+Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house,
+and all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and
+forks that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and
+these she now ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day
+Marguerite had kept silence towards her father on the subject of his
+depredations, but that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to
+leave her alone with him, and when he seated himself as usual by the
+corner of the parlor fireplace, she said:--
+
+"My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything,
+even your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I
+am forced to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely
+enough to live on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night
+and day to pay for the schooling of little Jean with the price of the
+lace dress we are now making. My dear father, I implore you to give up
+your researches."
+
+"You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished; I
+shall have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved
+undiscoverable. You will have millions--"
+
+"Give us meanwhile the bread to eat," replied Marguerite.
+
+"Bread? is there no bread here?" said Claes, with a frightened air.
+"No bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?"
+
+"You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been
+cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies,
+the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have
+borrowed--"
+
+"Then what are we living on?" he demanded.
+
+Marguerite held up her needle and continued:--
+
+"Gabriel's income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both
+ends meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with
+bills that I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about.
+When I think I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some
+unexpected bill for potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me."
+
+"My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders."
+
+"It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
+everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least,
+refrain from making debts."
+
+"I don't wish to make any more!" he said.
+
+"Any more?" she cried, "then you have some?"
+
+"Mere trifles," he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+
+For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
+lowering of her father's character, and suffered from it so much that
+she dared not question him.
+
+A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
+the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
+amount, falling due in consecutive months.
+
+"All is over!" cried Marguerite, "the time has come."
+
+She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+steps, talking to herself:--
+
+"A hundred thousand francs!" she cried. "I must find them, or see my
+father in prison. What am I to do?"
+
+Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up
+to the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an
+immense, brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty
+glass vessels: here and there were books, and tables encumbered with
+specimens and products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the
+disorder of scientific pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish
+habits. This litter of retorts and vaporizers, metals, fantastically
+colored crystals, specimens hooked upon the walls or lying on the
+furnaces, surrounded the central figure of Balthazar Claes, without a
+coat, his arms bare like those of a workman, his breast exposed, and
+showing the white hair which covered it. His eyes were gazing with
+horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough. The receiver of this instrument
+was covered with a lens made of double convex glasses, the space
+between the glasses being filled with alchohol, which focussed the
+light coming through one of the compartments of the rose-window of the
+garret. The shelf of the receiver communicated with the wire of an
+immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier, busy at the moment in moving
+the pedestal of the machine, which was placed on a movable axle so as
+to keep the lens in a perpendicular direction to the rays of the sun,
+turned round, his face black with dust, and called out,--
+
+"Ha! mademoiselle, don't come in."
+
+The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument, and
+receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads of
+silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
+strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
+of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to
+spring, all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in
+terror,--
+
+"He is mad!"
+
+Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Send away
+Lemulquinier."
+
+"No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no
+one has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
+for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
+complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
+At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
+about to show results which I alone--"
+
+"My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
+paying your notes of hand--"
+
+"Wait, wait!"
+
+"Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten
+thousand francs by four o'clock."
+
+"Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
+this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If
+I could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful."
+
+He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
+rolled from his eyes.
+
+"Monsieur is quite right," said Lemulquinier; "it is all the fault of
+that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!"
+
+Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+
+"Leave us, Mulquinier," she said.
+
+"Ah! I see a new experiment!" cried Claes.
+
+"Father, lay aside your experiments," said his daughter, when they
+were alone. "You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have
+not a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What
+will become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white
+hairs and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will
+not allow it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would
+be dreadful to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes
+to our position; see reason at last!"
+
+"Madness!" cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his
+luminous eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and
+repeated the word "Madness!" so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "your mother would never have uttered that word to me.
+She was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned a
+science to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human
+race; she knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The
+feelings of a loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial
+affection. Yes, Love is above all other feelings. See reason!" he went
+on, striking his breast. "Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say
+we are poor; well, my daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your
+father, obey me. I will make you rich when I please. Your fortune? it
+is a pittance! When I find the solvent of carbon I will fill your
+parlor with diamonds, and they are but a scintilla of what I seek. You
+can well afford to wait while I consume my life in superhuman
+efforts."
+
+"Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you
+have already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of
+my mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him,
+doubtless, as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to
+him, as she sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving
+myself wholly to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling
+you to render an account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past
+and think of the present. I am here now to represent the necessity
+which you have created for yourself. You must have money to meet your
+notes--do you understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but
+the portrait of your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of
+my mother, who felt herself too feeble to defend her children against
+their father; she ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my
+brothers and my sister; I come, father, in the name of all the Claes,
+and I command you to give up your experiments, or earn the means of
+pursuing them hereafter, if pursue them you must. If you arm yourself
+with the power of your paternity, which you employ only for our
+destruction, I have on my side your ancestors and your honor, whose
+voice is louder than that of chemistry. The Family is greater than
+Science. I have been too long your daughter."
+
+"And you choose to be my executioner," he said, in a feeble voice.
+
+Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
+she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother's voice
+saying to her, "Do not oppose your father too much; love him well."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII
+
+"Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said
+Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. "We were
+just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a
+scrap of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he's almost in the
+shoes of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT," he said to
+Josette, clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting
+hold of the Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some
+nonsense about notes of hand."
+
+"Well, pay them yourself," said Martha, "out of your wages."
+
+"Where's the butter for my bread?" said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+
+"Where's the money to buy it?" she answered, sharply. "Come, old
+villain, if you make gold in that devil's kitchen of yours, why don't
+you make butter? 'Twouldn't be half so difficult, and you could sell
+it in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry
+bread. The young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do
+you expect to be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won't
+spend more than one hundred francs a month for the whole household.
+There's only one dinner for all. If you want dainties you've got your
+furnaces upstairs where you fricassee pearls till there's nothing else
+talked of in town. Get your roast chickens up there."
+
+Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+
+"He will go and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha;
+"all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old
+scarecrow!"
+
+"Starve him! that's the only way to manage him," said Josette. "For a
+week past he hasn't rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
+he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with
+the present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay
+hands on them, I can tell him that."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Martha, "I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
+wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking a
+Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he'd be burned
+alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in
+Africa."
+
+Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
+gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother's letter, and read
+as follows:--
+
+  My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+
+Josephine.
+
+
+To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de
+Solis, uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the
+money entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
+children should present the paper.
+
+"Martha," cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; "go to
+Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble,
+discreet heart! he never told me," she thought; "though all my griefs
+and cares are his, he never told me!"
+
+Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+
+"You have kept a secret from me," she said, showing him her mother's
+letter.
+
+Emmanuel bent his head.
+
+"Marguerite, are you in great trouble?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "be my support,--you, whom my mother calls 'our
+good Emmanuel.'" She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy
+in knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+
+"My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
+saw you in the gallery," he said; "but I scarcely dared to hope the
+time might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you
+know my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to
+your mother's wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions."
+
+"You have saved us," she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
+go down to the parlor.
+
+After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family
+now found themselves.
+
+"I must pay those notes at once," said Emmanuel. "If Merkstus holds
+them all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the
+remaining seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large
+sum in ducats, which are easy to carry secretly."
+
+"Oh!" she said, "bring them at night; we can hide them when my father
+is asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from
+me. Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!" she said,
+weeping and resting her forehead against the young man's heart.
+
+This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
+protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
+melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too
+full, was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+
+"What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live
+in that garret, where the air is stifling."
+
+"What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard
+III., 'My kingdom for a horse'?" said Emmanuel. "He is pitiless; and
+in that you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will,
+your whole fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is
+neither yours nor his."
+
+"Give him my fortune?" she said, pressing her lover's hand and looking
+at him with ardor in her eyes; "you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told
+a hundred lies to make me keep it!"
+
+"Alas! I may be selfish in my own way," he said. "Sometimes I long for
+you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
+you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+grandeurs of wealth can separate us."
+
+"Dear, let us not speak of ourselves."
+
+"Ourselves!" he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+"The evil is great, but it is not irreparable."
+
+"It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head. To
+reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
+consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws,
+he has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
+the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
+fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?"
+
+"Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire
+him for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
+you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your
+father ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it
+costs him nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it."
+
+"My poor mother is happy," said Marguerite; "she would have suffered a
+thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless."
+
+"There is an end," said Emmanuel. "When you have nothing left,
+Monsieur Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop."
+
+"Let him stop now, then," cried Marguerite, "for we are without a
+penny!"
+
+Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes's notes and returned, bringing
+them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
+moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
+noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a
+father, reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the
+court-yard, then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone
+with his daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy
+kindness.
+
+"My child," he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+tenderness, "forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
+wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
+wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold," he
+went on, pointing to the martyr's portrait. "He died for Liberty, I
+die for Science; he is venerated, I am hated."
+
+"Hated? oh, my father, no," she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
+"we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?" she said, turning to her
+sister who came in at the moment.
+
+"What is the matter, dear father?" said his youngest daughter, taking
+his hand.
+
+"I have ruined you."
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, "but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+always at the head of his class."
+
+"See, father," said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
+way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the
+clock, "here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there
+is nothing left to pay them with--"
+
+"Then you have money?" whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he
+recovered from his surprise.
+
+His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
+joy and hope in her father's face as he looked about him to discover
+the gold.
+
+"Father," she said, "I have my own fortune."
+
+"Give it to me," he said with a rapacious gesture; "I will return you
+a hundred-fold."
+
+"Yes, I will give it to you," answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+
+"Ah, my dear daughter!" he cried, "you save my life. I have thought of
+a last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this
+time, I do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to
+my arms, my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon
+earth. You give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow
+the power to heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you
+with jewels, with wealth."
+
+He kissed his daughter's forehead, took her hands and pressed them,
+and testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed
+almost obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked
+at her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
+mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
+rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of
+his attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature
+old age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the
+contrast of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt,
+sometimes by a glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the
+dining-room.
+
+"Well, well," he said, following her eyes, "in six months we shall
+fill them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a
+queen. Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all
+created beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita," he said,
+smiling, "thy name is a prophecy. 'Margarita' means a pearl. Sterne
+says so somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a
+Sterne? it would amuse you."
+
+"A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease," she answered; "we
+have suffered enough already."
+
+"Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you
+shall be rich and all-powerful."
+
+"Mademoiselle has got such a good heart," said Lemulquinier, whose
+seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+
+For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
+the natural graces of his character and the charms of his
+conversation. Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out
+a magnetic fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness
+of spirit, which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were,
+his daughters into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found,
+for the first time in many months, the father and the children
+reunited. The young professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the
+influence of the scene; for Claes's manners and conversation had
+recovered their former irresistible seduction!
+
+Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they
+live. More out of date with their surroundings than really
+absent-minded, they are never in harmony with the life about them; they
+know and forget all; they prejudge the future in their own minds,
+prophesy to their own souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet
+they say nothing of all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they
+sometimes use their power to observe and recognize that which goes on
+around them, they are satisfied with having divined its meaning; their
+occupations hurry them on, and they frequently make false application
+of the knowledge they have acquired about the things of life.
+Sometimes they wake from their social apathy, or they drop from the
+world of thought to the world of life; at such times they come with
+well-stored memories, and are by no means strangers to what is
+happening.
+
+Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
+brain, knew his daughter's whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
+history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now
+showed this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part
+in it. It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the
+lovers were unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,
+--contrasting with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor
+children. When Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his
+family with light and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis,
+who had shown some embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets
+three thousand ducats in gold, the possession of which he had feared
+to betray. He placed them on the work-table, where Marguerite covered
+them with some linen she was mending; and then he went to his own
+house to fetch the rest of the money. When he returned, Felicie had
+gone to bed. Eleven o'clock struck; Martha, who sat up to undress her
+mistress, was still with Felicie.
+
+"Where can we hide it?" said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
+of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
+disastrous.
+
+"I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow," said Emmanuel;
+"you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
+looking for them there."
+
+Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the
+work-table to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a
+piercing cry, and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as
+they fell, and the coins were scattered about the room. Her father
+stood at the parlor door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+
+"What are you doing," he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
+terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
+hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
+sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
+horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
+
+"I could not be mistaken," said Balthazar, sitting down; "I heard the
+sound of gold."
+
+He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
+beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the
+ticking of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled
+on the parlor.
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur de Solis," said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
+glance which meant, "Come to my rescue and help me to save this
+money."
+
+"What gold is this?" resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
+Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+
+"This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
+to me that I may pay our debts honorably," she answered.
+
+Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
+caught him by the arm.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you must not escape my thanks."
+
+"Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
+Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own
+property," Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him
+with an almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+
+"I shall not allow that," said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
+paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+astonished young people. "How much is it?" His eager passion made him
+more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
+his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+
+"Let us count it," he said.
+
+"There are six thousand ducats," said Emmanuel.
+
+"Seventy thousand francs," remarked Claes.
+
+The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
+thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means of
+paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
+hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
+can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
+that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
+denuded land of the forest of Waignies."
+
+Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel's purity of soul. Brought
+up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
+young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
+and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
+conscience.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Balthazar, "I thought you had more confidence
+in a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father."
+
+After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
+out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+
+The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
+
+"You love me, do you not?"
+
+"Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it."
+
+She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to
+gather them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite
+allowed him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two
+thousand ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a
+desperate air,--
+
+"Marguerite, I must have that money."
+
+"If you take it, it will be robbery," she replied coldly. "Hear me,
+father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred
+deaths a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield."
+
+"Do you mean to kill your father?"
+
+"We avenge our mother," she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
+Claes died.
+
+"My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
+those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
+problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me," he cried in accents of
+despair. "Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father.
+Yes, I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the
+word of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children
+are sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
+my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
+myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will
+do your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no
+longer be the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my
+authority. I swear by your mother's memory!" he cried, shedding tears.
+
+Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
+thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+
+"Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!" he cried. "What are
+sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
+will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon
+my labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I
+will go away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the
+fortunes I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has
+taken from them."
+
+Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
+his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
+
+"Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I
+will myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you
+shall say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant
+and incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your
+hands. You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless
+you as the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your
+blood."
+
+"If it were my blood, my life's blood, I would give it to you," she
+cried; "but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and
+sister? No. Cease, cease!" she said, wiping her tears and pushing
+aside her father's caressing hands.
+
+"Sixty thousand francs and two months," he said, rising in anger;
+"that is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and
+wealth. I curse you!" he went on; "you are no daughter of mine, you
+are not a woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a
+wife!-- Give it to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious
+child, I will love you forever,"--and he stretched his hand with a
+movement of hideous energy towards the gold.
+
+"I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
+us now," she said, pointing to the picture.
+
+"Try to live, if you can, with your father's blood upon you," cried
+Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a
+beggar might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to
+which she replied by a negative motion of her head.
+
+"Farewell, my daughter," he said, gently, "may you live happy!"
+
+When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which
+separated her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost
+consciousness of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid
+the immensities of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits
+both of Time and Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the
+Future. It seemed to her that days elapsed between each footfall of
+her father as he went up the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over
+her as she heard him enter his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which
+flashed into her soul with the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran
+up the stairway, without light, without noise, with the velocity of an
+arrow, and saw her father with a pistol at his head.
+
+"Take all!" she cried, springing towards him.
+
+She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
+old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
+her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+
+"Enough, father, enough," she said; "remember your promise. If you do
+not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, mother!" she cried, turning towards Madame Claes's chamber, "YOU
+would have given him all--would you not?"
+
+"Sleep in peace," said Balthazar, "you are a good daughter."
+
+"Sleep!" she said, "the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
+old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother's heart."
+
+"Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
+the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
+the truth."
+
+"I comprehend our ruin," she said, leaving him.
+
+The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
+spend the day.
+
+"Well?" he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+
+"I yielded," she replied.
+
+"My dear life," he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, "if you had
+withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble,
+I adore you!"
+
+"Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?"
+
+"Leave the future to me," cried the young man, with a radiant look;
+"we love each other, and all is well."
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII
+
+Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
+and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
+of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
+well-being of the household.
+
+During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which
+beset her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she
+might be, she had come to hope in her father's genius. By an
+inexplicable phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no
+faith. Hope is the flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty.
+Marguerite said to herself, "If my father succeeds, we shall be
+happy." Claes and Lemulquinier alone said: "We shall succeed."
+Unhappily, from day to day the Searcher's face grew sadder. Sometimes,
+when he came to dinner he dared not look at his daughter; at other
+times he glanced at her in triumph. Marguerite employed her evenings
+in making young de Solis explain to her many legal points and
+difficulties. At last her masculine education was completed; she was
+evidently preparing herself to execute the plan she had resolved upon
+if her father were again vanquished in his duel with the Unknown (X).
+
+About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the
+mound now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife's chamber; he
+shuddered, no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost
+him: his movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of
+Science. Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while
+before dinner.
+
+"You have not succeeded, father?"
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Ah!" said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. "I will not say one word of
+reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of
+your promise; it is surely sacred to you--you are a Claes. Your
+children will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now
+belong to me; you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be
+gentle, and I will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I
+am going to leave you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs;
+for," she said, kissing him on his brow, "you are now my child. I take
+Martha with me; to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor
+child is only seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you;
+therefore be generous, do not ask her for money; she has only enough
+for the barest necessaries of the household. Take courage: renounce
+your labors and your thoughts for three or four years. The great
+problem may ripen towards discovery; by that time I shall have
+gathered the money that is necessary to solve it,--and you will solve
+it. Tell me, father, your queen is clement, is she not?"
+
+"Then all is not lost?" said the old man.
+
+"No, not if you keep your word."
+
+"I will obey you, my daughter," answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+
+The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his
+great-niece. He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain
+long enough for Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements.
+Monsieur Claes received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously
+sad and humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with
+blunt frankness while they were breakfasting:--
+
+"I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,--a
+ruinous passion, but we all have our manias."
+
+"Dear uncle!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of a
+Claes is there," said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, "and here,"
+striking his heart; "don't you think so? I count upon you: and for
+that reason, having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use
+in your service."
+
+"Ah!" cried Balthazar, "I will repay you with treasures--"
+
+"The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,"
+replied Conyncks, sternly. "Our ancestor has those words engraved upon
+his brow," he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur
+Conyncks for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a
+daughter twelve years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune.
+It was not impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the
+good people of Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her
+great-uncle. The rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought
+him back in hot haste to the House of Claes.
+
+Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
+For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
+camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
+latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
+place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
+into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
+were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was
+accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the one
+ultra-monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of
+functionaries of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance,
+to one or the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall
+of the legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
+between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes"
+displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so
+brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the
+lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were
+unable to withstand such practice. The two societies naturally became
+exclusive.
+
+Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His
+self-love must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he
+received when he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with
+whom he had rubbed shoulders up to the time of this social change.
+He had now reached his fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man
+who intends to marry can think of a young wife. The matches to which
+he was able to aspire were all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition
+prompted him to enter the upper circle by means of some creditable
+alliance.
+
+The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
+kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to
+the old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind
+prevented him from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However
+poor a daughter of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband
+the dower of social vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus.
+Pierquin therefore returned to his allegiance, with the secret
+intention of making the necessary sacrifices to conclude a marriage
+which should realize all his ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar
+and Felicie during Marguerite's absence; but in so doing he
+discovered, rather late in the day, a formidable competitor in
+Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the deceased abbe was thought to be
+considerable, and to the eyes of a man who calculated all the affairs
+of life in figures, the young heir seemed more powerful through his
+money than through the seductions of the heart--as to which Pierquin
+never made himself uneasy. In his mind the abbe's fortune restored the
+de Solis name to all its pristine value. Gold and nobility of birth
+were two orbs which reflected lustre on one another and doubled the
+illumination.
+
+The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin's spirit of emulation.
+He tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and
+sundry expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and
+business airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he
+declared himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as
+if to let her know that she alone could reconcile him with life.
+Felicie, who received for the first time in her life the compliments
+of a man, listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive;
+she took emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix
+the vague emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her
+mind. Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving
+attentions with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless
+wished to be, like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of
+a man.
+
+Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
+over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in his
+attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
+intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false
+perhaps in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake.
+Soon, little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice
+behind Emmanuel's back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a
+word a meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent
+mistakes. Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to
+discover the secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were
+really a question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all
+hope; but, notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them,
+neither Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good
+reason that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the
+reins of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as
+to her projects.
+
+The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
+difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
+making him play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present;
+during most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply
+stupid. Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three
+fortunes, a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin,
+beneath the burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than
+annihilated. This man of genius, gagged by dire necessity and
+upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of
+the most unfeeling of men. Even Pierquin could not enter without
+respect the presence of that caged lion, whose eyes, full of baffled
+power, now calmed by sadness and faded from excess of light, seemed to
+proffer a prayer for charity which the mouth dared not utter.
+Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered face, whose fires
+revived at the conception of a new experiment; then, as he looked
+about the parlor, Balthazar's eyes would fasten on the spot where his
+wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand across
+the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense, and his
+head fell forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the world,
+and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
+
+This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man
+the necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the
+convictions of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes
+and Marguerite had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly
+checked the impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in
+efforts at consolation which still further embittered the anguish of
+the doomed Titan.
+
+Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in
+her departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either
+to him or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her
+he seemed annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against
+him? Was he humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of
+paternity to his own child? Had he come to love her less because she
+was now the father, he the child? Perhaps there were many of these
+reasons, many of these inexpressible feelings which float like vapors
+through the soul, in the mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite.
+However great may be the great men of earth, be they known or unknown,
+fortunate or unfortunate in their endeavors, all have likenesses which
+belong to human nature. By a double misfortune they suffer through
+their greatness not less than through their defects; and perhaps
+Balthazar needed to grow accustomed to the pangs of wounded vanity.
+The life he was leading, the evenings when these four persons met
+together in Marguerite's absence, were full of sadness and vague,
+uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like a parched-up soil;
+where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few rare consolations,
+though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the strength of the
+family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+
+Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the
+return of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her
+uncle who remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no
+doubt to lend the weight of his authority to some coup d'etat planned
+by his niece. Marguerite's return was made a family fete. Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar.
+When the travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went
+to meet it with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see
+her home once more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the
+court-yard to reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored
+like a guilty wife who is unable to dissimulate; but her face
+recovered its serenity as she looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed
+to gather strength to complete a work she had secretly undertaken.
+
+Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the
+dinner, father and daughter watched each other with distrust and
+curiosity. Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in
+Paris, doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis
+imitated his reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family
+secrets, said to Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of
+liveliness:--
+
+"Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres--"
+
+"I have seen little of Paris," she said; "I did not go there for
+amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai
+once more."
+
+"Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+Opera; and even there she was uneasy," said Monsieur Conyncks.
+
+It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite
+and Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the
+rest. As the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew
+more and more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but
+her motions, her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen
+anxiety. Messieurs Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of
+the secret feelings which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared
+to encourage her by expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept
+from a knowledge of the steps that had been taken on his behalf,
+withdrew little by little from his children and friends, and pointedly
+kept silence. Marguerite would no doubt soon disclose what she had
+decided upon for his future.
+
+To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age
+a man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and
+more thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he
+would be forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of
+those crises in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by
+imagery. The thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were
+laughing in the fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was
+coming, but they held up their heads and continued on their way.
+Monsieur Conyncks was the first to leave the room, conducted by
+Balthazar to his chamber. During the latter's absence Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis went away. Marguerite bade the notary good-night
+with much affection; she said nothing to Emmanuel, but she pressed his
+hand and gave him a tearful glance. She sent Felicie away, and when
+Claes returned to the parlor he found his daughter alone.
+
+"My kind father," she said in a trembling voice, "nothing could have
+made me leave home but the serious position in which we found
+ourselves; but now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest
+difficulties, I return with some chances of deliverance for all of us.
+Thanks to your name, and to my uncle's influence, and to the support
+of Monsieur de Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under
+government as receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth,
+they say, eighteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has
+given bonds as your security. Here is the nomination," she added,
+drawing a paper from her bag. "Your life in Douai, in this house,
+during the coming years of privation and sacrifice would be
+intolerable to you. Our father must be placed in a situation at least
+equal to that in which he has always lived. I ask nothing from the
+salary you will receive from this appointment; employ it as you see
+fit. I will only beg you to remember that we have not a penny of
+income, and that we must live on what Gabriel can give us out of his.
+The town shall know nothing of our inner life. If you were still to
+live in this house you would be an obstacle to the means my sister and
+I are about to employ to restore comfort and ease to the home. Have I
+abused the authority you gave me by putting you in a position to
+remake your own fortune? In a few years, if you so will, you can
+easily become the receiver-general."
+
+"In other words, Marguerite," said Balthazar, gently, "you turn me out
+of my own house."
+
+"I do not deserve that bitter reproach," replied the daughter,
+quelling the tumultuous beatings of her heart. "You will come back to
+us in a manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your
+promise. You are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he
+might himself accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the
+journey alone."
+
+"I shall not go," said Balthazar, rising; "I need no help from any one
+to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children."
+
+"It would be better, certainly," replied Marguerite, calmly. "But now
+I ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will
+explain in a few words. If you stay in this house your children will
+leave it, so that you may remain its master."
+
+"Marguerite!" cried Balthazar.
+
+"In that case," she said, continuing her words without taking notice
+of her father's anger, "it will be necessary to notify the minister of
+your refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative
+post, which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have
+obtained but for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into
+the glove of a lady."
+
+"My children leave me!" he exclaimed.
+
+"You must leave us or we must leave you," she said. "If I were your
+only child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my
+fate; but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with
+hunger and despair. I promised it to her who died there," she said,
+pointing to the place where her mother's bed had stood. "We have
+hidden our troubles from you; we have suffered in silence; our
+strength is gone. My father, we are not on the edge of an abyss, we
+are at the bottom of it. Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of
+it; our efforts must not be incessantly brought to nought by the
+caprices of a passion."
+
+"My dear children," cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite's hand, "I
+will help you, I will work, I--"
+
+"Here is the means," she answered, showing him the official letter.
+
+"But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me
+lose the fruits of ten years' work, and the enormous sums of money
+which my laboratory represents. There," he said, pointing towards the
+garret, "are our real resources."
+
+Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--
+
+"Father, you must choose."
+
+"Ah! my daughter, you are very hard," he replied, sitting down in an
+armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+
+The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple
+announcement turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant
+that the old valet remarked hastily:--
+
+"Don't be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at
+eleven o'clock to breakfast. He didn't go to bed all night. At two in
+the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the
+window at the laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him;
+he wept; he is in trouble. Here's the famous month of July when the
+sun is able to enrich us all, and if you only would--"
+
+"Enough," said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have
+assailed her father's mind.
+
+A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on
+the places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to
+his laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were
+indispensable to him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a
+stock-gambler, to whom the public holidays are so much lost time. Here
+were his hopes; here the heavens contained the only atmosphere in
+which his lungs could breathe the breath of life. This alliance of
+places and things with men, which is so powerful in feeble natures,
+becomes almost tyrannical in men of science and students. To leave his
+house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science, to abandon the Problem,
+--it was death.
+
+Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in
+which her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the
+parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+
+At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite
+studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of
+stormy grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid
+him good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist,
+pressed her to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,--
+
+"I have been to get my passport."
+
+The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements,
+crushed the poor girl's heart; she turned away her head to conceal her
+tears, and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to
+weep at her ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness
+of a man who had come to a decision.
+
+"So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle," he said to Monsieur
+Conyncks. "I have always wished to go there."
+
+"It is a place where one can live cheaply," replied the old man.
+
+"Is our father going away?" cried Felicie.
+
+Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+
+"You must leave him with me to-day," said Balthazar, putting his son
+beside him. "I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him
+good-bye."
+
+Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
+gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
+both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile. All
+instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
+declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
+Balthazar's age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was
+firm; he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the
+tyrannous power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening
+was over, and father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who
+throughout the day had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the
+first years of his fatherhood, held out his hand and said to
+Marguerite with a tenderness that was mingled with despair,--
+
+"Are you satisfied with your father?"
+
+"You are worthy of HIM," said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
+Van Claes.
+
+The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to the
+laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
+cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
+him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
+garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at
+the various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded;
+each was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly
+ordered Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids,
+and to separate all substances which might produce explosions. While
+taking these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those
+uttered by a condemned man before going to the scaffold.
+
+"Here," he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
+a voltaic pile were dipped, "is an experiment whose results ought to
+be watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have
+driven from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their
+feet. In a combination of carbon and sulphur," he went on, speaking to
+himself, "carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--"
+
+"Ah! is that how it would be?" said Lemulquinier, contemplating his
+master with admiration.
+
+"Now here," continued Balthazar, after a pause, "the combination is
+subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act--"
+
+"If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force."
+
+"No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the
+conditions of crystallization--"
+
+"Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization," cried the
+old valet impatiently.
+
+"If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will
+crystallize," said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of
+indistinct thoughts which were parts of a complete conception in his
+own mind; "but if the battery works under certain conditions of which
+I am ignorant--it must be watched carefully--it is quite possible
+that-- Ah! what am I thinking of? It is no longer a question of
+chemistry, my friend; we are to keep accounts in Bretagne."
+
+Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur
+de Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science
+had imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the
+carriage with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the
+threshold. There, as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with
+a despairing pressure, he whispered in her ear, "You are a good girl;
+I bear you no ill-will"; then she darted through the court-yard into
+the parlor, and flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her
+mother had died, and prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish
+the hard task that lay before her. She was already strengthened by an
+inward voice, sounding in her heart the encouragement of angels and
+the gratitude of her mother, when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel,
+and Pierquin came in, after watching the carriage until it
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV
+
+"And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!" said Pierquin.
+
+"Save the family," she answered simply. "We own nearly thirteen
+hundred acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into
+three farms, put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I
+believe that in a few years, with patience and great economy, each of
+us," motioning to her sister and brother, "will have a farm of over
+four-hundred acres, which may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly
+fifteen thousand francs. My brother Gabriel will have this house, and
+all that now stands in his name on the Grand-Livre, for his portion.
+We shall then be able to redeem our father's property and return it to
+him free from all encumbrance, by devoting our incomes, each of us, to
+paying off his debts."
+
+"But, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite's
+understanding of business and her cool judgment, "you will need at
+least two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your
+houses, and purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?"
+
+"That is where my difficulties begin," she said, looking alternately
+at Pierquin and de Solis; "I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has
+already spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father's
+security."
+
+"You have friends!" cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+demoiselles Claes were "four-hundred-thousand-franc girls," after all.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin,
+unfortunately for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of
+his enthusiasm, and he promptly added,--
+
+"I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs."
+
+Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to
+find her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at
+her sister, who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the
+poor girl had allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin's meaningless
+gallantries.
+
+"You shall only pay me five per cent interest," went on the lawyer,
+"and refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take
+a mortgage on your property. And don't be uneasy; you shall only have
+the outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy
+farmers, and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like
+a good relation."
+
+Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too
+much occupied in studying the changes of her sister's face to perceive
+it. After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused
+smile, and answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de
+Solis:--
+
+"You are indeed a good relation,--I expected nothing less of you; but
+an interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall
+wait till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has
+in the Funds."
+
+Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+
+"Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+you," said Marguerite to her sister. "Jean, my angel, be a good boy;
+don't tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as
+many new ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard."
+
+Felicie carried off her brother.
+
+"Cousin," said Marguerite to Pierquin, "and you, monsieur," she said
+to Monsieur de Solis, "I know you have been to see my father during my
+absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let
+us understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both
+with the greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with
+Josette and Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one,
+not even an old friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the
+circumstances in which we are placed, our conduct must be
+irreproachable. We are vowed to toil and solitude for a long, long
+time."
+
+There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in
+contemplation of Marguerite's head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know
+what to say. He took leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against
+himself; for he suddenly perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and
+that he, Pierquin, had just behaved like a fool.
+
+"Pierquin, my friend," he said, apostrophizing himself in the street,
+"if a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool
+I am! I've got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business,
+without counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets,
+which is likely to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is
+so economical), and I've had the madness to ask interest from
+Mademoiselle Claes! I know those two are jeering at me now! I mustn't
+think of Marguerite any more. No. After all, Felicie is a sweet,
+gentle little creature, who will suit me much better. Marguerite's
+character is iron; she would want to rule me--and--she would rule me.
+Come, come, let's be generous; I wish I was not so much of a lawyer:
+am I never to get that harness off my back? Bless my soul! I'll begin
+to fall in love with Felicie, and I won't budge from that sentiment.
+She will have a farm of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner
+or later, will be worth twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for
+the soil about Waignies is excellent. Just let my old uncle des
+Racquets die, poor dear man, and I'll sell my practice and be a man of
+leisure, with fifty--thou--sand--francs--a--year. My wife is a Claes,
+I'm allied to the great families. The deuce! we'll see if those
+Courtevilles and Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come
+and dine with a Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of
+Douai; I'll obtain the cross, and get to be deputy--in short,
+everything. Ha, ha! Pierquin, my boy, now keep yourself in hand;
+no more nonsense, because--yes, on my word of honor--Felicie
+--Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes--loves you!"
+
+When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to
+Marguerite, who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They
+rose with one impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but
+as they reached the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist
+his joy, and, in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said,--
+
+"I have three hundred thousand francs of yours."
+
+"What!" she cried, "did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then
+where did you get them?"
+
+"Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who
+first said the word 'ourselves'?"
+
+"Dear Emmanuel!" she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held
+hers; and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself
+into a low chair.
+
+"It is for me to thank you," he said, with the voice of love, "since
+you accept all."
+
+"Oh, my dear beloved one," she cried, "this moment effaces many a
+grief and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,"
+she continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, "I know the
+way to make it mine."
+
+She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to
+witness. The young man's eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did
+not notice that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the
+words:--
+
+"From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father's
+indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself," she said, holding
+out the ring. "Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you--she would have
+chosen you."
+
+The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside
+her, offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+
+"This is my mother's wedding-ring," he said, kissing it. "My
+Marguerite, am I to have no other pledge than this?"
+
+She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+
+"Alas, dear love," she said, greatly agitated, "are we not doing
+wrong? We have so long to wait!"
+
+"My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of patience,
+--he spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you; I have
+long mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as I am
+His."
+
+They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm.
+It was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an
+overflowing spring, poured forth its superabundance in little
+wavelets. The events which separated these lovers produced a
+melancholy which only made their happiness the keener, giving it a
+sense of something sharp, like pain.
+
+Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful
+tact of love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,
+--exchanging a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this
+discretion cost him, how hungry his soul was for that happiness so
+long desired, which had just been consecrated by the betrothal of
+their hearts.
+
+"Come here, little sister," said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their
+words of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their
+projects. In spite of her sister's joyous tone and lively manner,
+Felicie experienced a sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite
+took her hand and felt it tremble.
+
+"Mademoiselle Felicie," said the elder, with her lips at her sister's
+ear. "I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence,
+and he has said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them."
+Felicie blushed. "Don't defend yourself, my angel," continued
+Marguerite, "it is so natural to love! Perhaps your dear nature will
+improve his; he is egotistical and self-interested, but for all that
+he is a good man, and his defects may even add to your happiness. He
+will love you as the best of his possessions; you will be a part of
+his business affairs. Forgive me this one word, dear love; you will
+soon correct the bad habit he has acquired of seeing money in
+everything, by teaching him the business of the heart."
+
+Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+
+"Besides," added Marguerite, "he has property; and his family belongs
+to the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don't think I would
+oppose your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do
+you?"
+
+Felicie let fall the words, "Dear sister."
+
+"Yes, you may confide in me," cried Marguerite, "sisters can surely
+tell each other their secrets."
+
+These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When
+Marguerite, expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state
+of Felicie's heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--
+
+"Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--"
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, laughing, "leave me to my own devices; I have a
+model before my eyes."
+
+"Saucy child!" exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+
+Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as
+the accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting
+property, and though he was indifferent to which sister he should
+marry so long as both had the same name and the same dower, he did
+perceive that the two were, to use his own expression, "romantic and
+sentimental girls," adjectives employed by commonplace people to
+ridicule the gifts which Nature sows with grudging hand along the
+furrows of humanity. The lawyer no doubt said to himself that he had
+better swim with the stream; and accordingly the next day he came to
+see Marguerite, and took her mysteriously into the little garden,
+where he began to talk sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of
+the primal contract which, according to social usage, must precede the
+notarial contract.
+
+"Dear cousin," he said, "you and I have not always been of one mind as
+to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
+you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
+desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
+fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
+me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
+have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
+that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
+successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
+that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
+brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
+take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
+service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at
+one quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all
+I ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
+good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
+wife happy."
+
+"This is all satisfactory, cousin," answered Marguerite; "but my
+sister's choice depends upon herself and also on my father's will."
+
+"I know that, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, "but you are the
+mother of the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that
+you should judge me rightly."
+
+This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the
+note ran as follows: "Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor
+of the city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT
+of being present, etc."
+
+Marguerite accepted the lawyer's offer only so far as it related to
+his professional services, so that she might not in any degree
+compromise either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister's future,
+or her father's authority.
+
+The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette
+(who vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and
+seconded all her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where
+she began operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed
+by Pierquin. Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the
+mind of that worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an
+investment, and he had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he
+contrived to save Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and
+working the ground intended for the farms. He found three young men,
+sons of rich farmers, who were anxious to settle themselves in life,
+and he succeeded, through the prospect he held out to them of the
+fertility of the land, in making them take leases of the three farms
+on which the buildings were to be constructed. To gain possession of
+the farms rent-free for three years the tenants bound themselves to
+pay ten thousand francs a year the fourth year, twelve thousand the
+sixth year, and fifteen thousand for the remainder of the term; to
+drain the land, make the plantations, and purchase the cattle. While
+the buildings were being put up the farmers were to clear the land.
+
+Four years after Balthazar Claes's departure from his home Marguerite
+had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two
+hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put
+up the farm buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the
+brave girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town.
+Marguerite superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts
+and leases with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which
+women know so well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong
+sentiment. By the fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand
+francs from the rental of the farms, together with the income from the
+Funds standing in her brother's name, and the proceeds of her father's
+property, towards paying off the mortgages on that property, and
+repairing the devastation which her father's passion had wrought in
+the old mansion of the Claes. This redemption went on more rapidly as
+the interest account decreased. Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite
+to take the remaining one hundred thousand francs of his uncle's
+bequest, and by joining to it twenty thousand francs of his own
+savings, pay off in the third year of her management a large slice of
+the debts. This life of courage, privation, and endurance was never
+relaxed for five years; but all went well,--everything prospered under
+the administration and influence of Marguerite Claes.
+
+Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in
+the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by
+his great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover,
+he succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of
+her father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the
+whole Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had
+repaired its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar
+for the hand of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that
+of Marguerite.
+
+At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks
+left Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly
+desired by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might
+return to his family and crown their happiness by his presence.
+Marguerite had often expressed a regret at not being able to replace
+the pictures which had formerly adorned the gallery and the
+reception-rooms, before the day when her father would return as master
+of his house. In her absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with
+Felicie to prepare a surprise which should make the younger sister a
+sharer in the restoration of the House of Claes. The two bought a
+number of fine pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate
+the gallery. Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing. Wishing
+to testify to Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble
+conduct and in the self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her
+mother's dying mandate, he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures,
+among them several of those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should
+be brought to Douai in Marguerite's absence, so that the Claes gallery
+might once more be complete.
+
+During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her
+sister or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed;
+but since her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming
+symptoms, the gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony
+with which he lived that he might spend the greater part of his salary
+in experiments the results of which forever disappointed him. Though
+he was only sixty-five years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His
+eyes were sunken in their orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a
+few hairs remained as a fringe around his skull; he allowed his beard
+to grow, and cut it off with scissors when its length annoyed him; he
+was bent like a field-laborer, and the condition of his clothes had
+reached a degree of wretchedness which his decrepitude now rendered
+hideous. Thought still animated that noble face, whose features were
+scarcely discernible under its wrinkles; but the fixity of the eyes, a
+certain desperation of manner, a restless uneasiness, were all
+diagnostics of insanity, or rather of many forms of insanity.
+Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the look of a monomaniac; at other
+times impatient anger at not seizing a secret which flitted before his
+eyes like a will o' the wisp brought symptoms of madness into his
+face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter betrayed his
+irrationality: but during the greater part of the time, he was sunk in
+a state of complete depression which combined all the phases of
+insanity in the cold melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and
+imperceptible these symptoms may have been to the eye of strangers,
+they were, unfortunately, only too plain to those who had known
+Balthazar Claes sublime in goodness, noble in heart, stately in
+person,--a Claes of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige now remained.
+
+Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant
+toil, had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+expression of the old valet's face showed a singular mixture of
+anxiety and admiration for his master which might easily have misled
+an onlooker. Though he listened to Balthazar's words with respect, and
+followed his every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of
+the servant of science very much as a mother takes care of her child,
+and even seemed to protect him, because in the vulgar details of life,
+to which Balthazar gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These
+old men, wrapped in one idea, confident of the reality of their hope,
+stirred by the same breath, the one representing the shell, the other
+the soul of their mutual existence, formed a spectacle at once tender
+and distressing.
+
+When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living
+at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+possession of his office.
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV
+
+Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his
+native town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar's mind. His
+daughter's letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed
+of crowning his career by a series of experiments that must lead to
+the solution of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite's arrival
+with extreme impatience.
+
+The daughter threw herself into her father's arms and wept for joy.
+This time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon
+for the exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself
+criminal, like those great men who violate the liberties of the people
+for the safety of the nation. But she shuddered as she now
+contemplated her father and saw the change which had taken place in
+him since her last visit. Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of
+his niece, and insisted on taking Balthazar as soon as possible to
+Douai, where the influence of his native place might restore him to
+health and reason amid the happiness of a recovered domestic life.
+
+After the first transports of the heart were over,--which were far
+warmer on Balthazar's part than Marguerite had expected,--he showed a
+singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+
+Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for a
+time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had
+dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and
+the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and
+childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations.
+His daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the
+energy she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take
+away from him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable
+feelings that had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had
+abdicated a paternity he had long neglected,--all these things
+affected his mind towards her, and increased her importance in his
+eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him beside Marguerite; he saw only his
+daughter, he thought only of her, and seemed to fear her, as certain
+weak husbands fear a superior woman who rules them. When he raised his
+eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with distress an expression
+of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault. The noble girl was
+unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible expression of that bald
+head, denuded by science and by toil, with the puerile smile, the
+eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance of the old man.
+She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that littleness,
+and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her father's sense
+of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to reappear in the
+bosom of his family. Her first step when they were alone was to ask
+him,--
+
+"Do you owe anything here?"
+
+Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:--
+
+"I don't know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+more about my affairs than I do myself."
+
+Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+
+"What does monsieur want?" asked Lemulquinier.
+
+Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her
+heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that
+some mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the
+companion of his labors.
+
+"My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+without you," she said.
+
+"Monsieur," began Lemulquinier, "owes--"
+
+At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+intercepted; it humiliated her.
+
+"Tell me all that my father owes," she said.
+
+"Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who
+is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and
+lead, and zinc and the reagents--"
+
+"Is that all?" asked Marguerite.
+
+Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under
+a spell,--
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle."
+
+"Very good," she said, "I will give them to you."
+
+Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,--
+
+"You are an angel, my child."
+
+He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less
+sad; and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily
+detected the signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain
+that the three thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of
+his laboratory.
+
+"Be frank with me, father," she said, letting him seat her on his
+knee; "you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home
+without an element of fear in the midst of the general joy."
+
+"My dear Marguerite," he said, taking her hands and kissing them with
+a grace that seemed a memory of her youth, "you would scold me--"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Truly?" he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. "Can
+I tell you all? will you pay--"
+
+"Yes," she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+
+"Well, I owe--oh! I dare not--"
+
+"Tell me, father."
+
+"It is a great deal."
+
+She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+
+"I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville."
+
+"Thirty thousand francs," she said, "is just the sum I have laid by. I
+am glad to give it to you," she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+
+He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the
+chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:--
+
+"My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the
+Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were
+about to sue me,--me, who would have made their fortune!"
+
+"Father," said Marguerite in accents of despair, "are you still
+searching?"
+
+"Yes, still searching," he said, with the smile of a madman, "and I
+shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached--"
+
+"We? who are we?"
+
+"I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he
+is devoted to me."
+
+Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+should lower himself in her uncle's eyes. She was frightened at the
+ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for
+the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who
+saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize
+the liberation of his fortune.
+
+On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and
+her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy
+over his master such as common men without education are able to
+obtain over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such
+men, taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete
+dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case
+the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows
+out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab
+for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of
+this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating
+yoke if it were real.
+
+They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable
+Marguerite to pay off her father's debts and request the manufacturers
+of chemical products to send nothing to Douai without first informing
+her of any orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change
+his style of dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his
+station. This corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical
+dignity which augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite,
+joyous in the thought of all the surprises that awaited her father
+when he entered his own house, started for Douai.
+
+Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the
+nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily
+diverted the chemist's mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of
+his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the
+joyous company of his family and friends gathering about him his
+emotion was so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice
+trembled, his eyelids reddened, and he held his children in so
+passionate an embrace, seeming unable to release them, that the
+spectators of the scene were moved to tears.
+
+When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from
+the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of
+the court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest
+details with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he
+drew himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The
+tears came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the
+care with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra
+that he formerly had sold,--a visible sign that all the other
+disasters had been repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room,
+whose sideboards and shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware
+not less valuable than the treasures that formerly stood there. Though
+the family meal lasted a long time, it was still too short for the
+narratives which Balthazar exacted from each of his children. The
+reaction of his moral being caused by this return to his home wedded
+him once more to family happiness, and he was again a father. His
+manners recovered their former dignity. At first the delight of
+recovering possession kept him from dwelling on the means by which the
+recovery had been brought about. His joy therefore was full and
+unalloyed.
+
+Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into
+the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal
+papers which the notary's clerk had laid upon a table, by which he was
+standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and
+Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+
+"This," said Pierquin, "is the guardianship account which Monsieur
+Claes renders to his children. It is not very amusing," he added,
+laughing after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively
+tone in speaking of serious matters, "but I must really oblige you to
+listen to it."
+
+Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a
+reproach, and his brow clouded.
+
+The clerk began the reading. Balthazar's amazement increased as little
+by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the
+fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have
+been sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing
+up of the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was
+intact and as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had
+controlled it. In consequence of this the House of Claes was free from
+all lien, Balthazar was master of it; moreover, his rural property was
+likewise released from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with
+these matters were signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the
+repayment of the moneys formerly borrowed, and releases of the various
+liens on the estates.
+
+Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood,
+the life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and
+looked about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of
+her sex, had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to
+see that all the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared.
+Each member of the family understood the old man's wish when the
+failing humid eyes sought for the daughter,--who was seen by all
+present, with the eyes of the soul, as an angel of strength and light
+within the house. Gabriel went to find her. Hearing her step,
+Balthazar ran to clasp her in his arms.
+
+"Father," she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man
+caught her and strained her to his breast, "I implore you not to
+lessen your sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying
+out your wishes, and be the sole author of the good that has been done
+here."
+
+Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter,
+folded his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face
+recovered an expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long
+years,--
+
+"Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!"
+
+He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went
+back to the parlor.
+
+"My children," he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former
+days had made him so imposing, "we all owe gratitude and thanks to my
+daughter Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has
+fulfilled my intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed
+by my labors, gave the reins of our domestic government into her
+hands."
+
+"Ah, now!" cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, "we must read the
+marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids me
+to draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur
+Raparlier is coming."
+
+The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+Claes's return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The
+company quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the
+quality of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes.
+The three families, thus united through the happiness of their
+children, seemed to vie with each other in contributing to the
+splendor of the occasion. The parlor was soon filled with the charming
+gifts that are made to bridal couples. Gold shimmered and glistened;
+silks and satins, cashmere shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much
+delight to those who gave as to those who received; enjoyment that was
+almost childlike shone on every face, and the mere value of the
+magnificent presents was lost sight of by the spectators,--who often
+busy themselves in estimating it out of curiosity.
+
+The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated,
+all present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the
+parlor on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next
+to them stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on,
+Felicie and Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only
+persons who were seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who,
+for this occasion, had taken Pierquin's duty. Jean stood behind his
+father. A score of ladies elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from
+among the nearest relatives of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the
+Claes, the mayor of Douai, who was to marry the couples, the twelve
+witnesses chosen from among the nearest friends of the three families,
+all, even the curate of Saint-Pierre, remained standing and formed an
+imposing circle at the end of the parlor next the court-yard. This
+homage paid by the whole assembly to Paternity, which at such a moment
+shines with almost regal majesty, gave to the scene a certain antique
+character. It was the only moment for sixteen long years when
+Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+
+Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if
+all the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived;
+on receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took
+up the marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis,
+which was the first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor
+opened and Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" he cried.
+
+Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a
+sign, he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious
+of a shock.
+
+"I dared not tell you, my child," said the father, "but since you have
+done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+Lemulquinier lent me all his savings--the fruit of twenty years'
+economy--for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah!
+my angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled
+me in my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,--without him I should
+have died."
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" cried Lemulquinier.
+
+"What is it?" said Balthazar, turning round.
+
+"A diamond!"
+
+Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+valet, who whispered in his ear,--
+
+"I have been to the laboratory."
+
+The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on
+the old Fleming which meant, "You went before me to the laboratory!"
+
+"Yes," continued Lemulquinier, "I found the diamond in the china
+capsule which communicated with the battery which we left to work,
+monsieur--and see!" he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral
+form, whose brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+
+"My children, my friends," said Balthazar, "forgive my old servant,
+forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven
+years has produced--without me--a discovery I have sought for sixteen
+years. How? My God, I know not--yes, I left sulphide of carbon under
+the influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been
+watched from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked
+in my laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects!
+Is it not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched
+that slow, that sudden--what can I call it?--crystallization,
+transformation, in short that miracle, then, then my children would
+have been richer still. Though this result is not the solution of the
+Problem which I seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from
+that diamond upon my native country, and this hour, which our
+satisfied affections have made so happy, would have glowed with the
+sunlight of Science."
+
+Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be
+sublime.
+
+Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected the
+souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite,
+saying,--
+
+"It is thine, my angel."
+
+Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the
+notary, saying, "Go on."
+
+The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as
+Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he
+reseated himself, said in a low voice,--
+
+"To-day I must be a father only."
+
+Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and
+kissed it respectfully.
+
+"No man was ever greater," said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to
+him; "no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad."
+
+After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened
+to question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been
+formed; but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident.
+He looked through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an
+angry gesture.
+
+"Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which
+no doubt produces metals, diamonds," he said, "was manifested there
+for one moment, by one chance."
+
+"That chance was of course some natural effect," whispered a guest
+belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation of
+everything. "At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has
+wasted."
+
+"Let us forget it," said Balthazar, addressing his friends; "I beg you
+to say no more about it to-day."
+
+Marguerite took her father's arm to lead the way to the
+reception-rooms of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been
+prepared. As he entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld
+it filled with pictures and garnished with choice flowers.
+
+"Pictures!" he exclaimed, "pictures!--and some of the old ones!"
+
+He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him;
+he felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation
+came before his eyes.
+
+"It is all your own, father," said Marguerite, guessing the feelings
+that oppressed his soul.
+
+"Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise," he cried, "how
+many times have you given life to your father?"
+
+"Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+heart," she said, "and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by
+nearly sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give
+them to Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be
+made comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us.
+Monsieur de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,--a life
+without luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you
+are able to return it."
+
+"Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father's
+providence."
+
+When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored
+and furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently
+descended to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand
+staircase, on every step of which were rare plants and flowering
+shrubs. A silver service of exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel
+to his father, attracted all eyes to a luxury which was surprising to
+the inhabitants of a town where such luxury is traditional. The
+servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of Pierquin, as well as those of the
+Claes household, were assembled to serve the repast. Seeing himself
+once more at the head of that table, surrounded by friends and
+relatives and happy faces beaming with heartfelt joy, Balthazar,
+behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was overcome by emotions so
+deep and so imposing that all present kept silence, as men are silent
+before great sorrows or great joys.
+
+"Dear children," he cried, "you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+home the prodigal father."
+
+These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however,
+and the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character
+of a family fete.
+
+Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to
+arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic
+splendor of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed
+this happy day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and
+dinners, which involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of
+social life. His eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near
+Cambrai belonging to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate
+from his daughter. Madame Pierquin also left her father's house to do
+the honors of a fine mansion which Pierquin had built, and where he
+desired to live in all the dignity of rank; for his practise was sold,
+and his uncle des Racquets had died and left him a large property
+scraped together by slow economy. Jean went to Paris to finish his
+education, and Monsieur and Madame de Solis alone remained with their
+father in the House de Claes. Balthazar made over to them the family
+home in the rear house, and took up his own abode on the second floor
+of the front building.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI
+
+Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father's material comfort,
+aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from the
+hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that
+happiness entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever
+afforded a better illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless
+felicity which all women cherish in their dreams. The union of two
+beings so courageous in the trials of life, who had loved each other
+through years with so sacred an affection, drew forth the respectful
+admiration of the whole community. Monsieur de Solis, who had long
+held an appointment as inspector-general of the University, resigned
+those functions to enjoy his happiness more freely, and remained at
+Douai where every one did such homage to his character and attainments
+that his name was proposed as candidate for the Electoral college
+whenever he should reach the required age. Marguerite, who had shown
+herself so strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet and
+tender woman.
+
+Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and
+yet, though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his
+ordinary income sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory.
+Marguerite restored all the old customs of the House of Claes, and
+gave a family fete every month in honor of her father, at which the
+Pierquins and the Conyncks were present; and she also received the
+upper ranks of society one day in the week at a "cafe" which became
+celebrated. Though frequently absent-minded, Claes took part in all
+these assemblages and became, to please his daughter, so willingly a
+man of the world that the family were able to believe he had renounced
+his search for the solution of the great problem.
+
+Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis
+to Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself
+and the inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age,
+barrenness, and other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the
+last lineal descendant of the family and heir to the titles and
+estates of his ancient house. Moreover, by one of those curious
+chances which seem impossible except in a book, the house of Solis had
+acquired the territory and titles of the Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite
+did not wish to separate from her husband, who was to stay in Spain
+long enough to settle his affairs, and she was, moreover, curious to
+see the castle of Casa-Real where her mother had passed her childhood,
+and the city of Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. She left
+Douai, consigning the care of the house to Martha, Josette, and
+Lemulquinier. Balthazar, to whom Marguerite had proposed a journey
+into Spain, declined to accompany her on the ground of his advanced
+age; but certain experiments which he had long meditated, and to which
+he now trusted for the realization of his hopes were the real reason
+of his refusal.
+
+The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until
+the middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for
+Italy on their way back to France. There, however, they received a
+letter from Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months,
+their father had completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were
+obliged to pay Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries
+of the household. The old valet had again sacrificed his little
+property to his master. Balthazar was no longer willing to see any
+one, and would not even admit his children to the house. Martha and
+Josette were dead. The coachman, the cook, and the other servants had
+long been dismissed; the horses and carriages were sold. Though
+Lemulquinier maintained the utmost secrecy as to his master's
+proceedings, it was believed that the thousand francs supplied by
+Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly on experiments. The small
+amount of provisions which the old valet purchased in the town seemed
+to show that the two old men contented themselves with the barest
+necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House of Claes, Gabriel and
+Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums which their father had
+again borrowed on it. None of his children had the slightest influence
+upon the old man, who at seventy years of age displayed extraordinary
+energy in bending everything to his will, even in matters that were
+trivial. Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had decided not to pay off
+his debts.
+
+This letter changed all Marguerite's travelling plans, and she
+immediately took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her
+past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar's debts; but she wished
+to do more, she wished to obey her mother's last injunction and save
+him from sinking dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise
+enough ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the
+work of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from
+his enfeebled faculties. But she was also anxious to control him
+without wounding his susceptibilities,--not wishing to imitate the
+children of Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result
+for which he had sacrificed so much.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which
+they found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A
+shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the
+noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight
+of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached,
+enticed also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that
+house on Marguerite's return to it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de
+Solis's valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that
+Monsieur Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.
+
+Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,--glad to escape a
+scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to
+admit her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man
+and prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant
+to notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+
+When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor.
+Horror overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as
+if a fire had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of
+Van Huysum and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The
+dining-room was empty: there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and
+a common deal table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two
+bowls, two forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which
+Claes and his servant had evidently just eaten. In a moment she had
+flown through her father's portion of the house, every room of which
+exhibited the same desolation as the parlor and dining-room. The idea
+of the Alkahest had swept like a conflagration through the building.
+Her father's bedroom had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which
+stood a miserable pewter candlestick with a tallow candle burned
+almost to the socket. The house was so completely stripped that not so
+much as a curtain remained at the windows. Every object of the
+smallest value,--everything, even the kitchen utensils, had been sold.
+
+Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
+in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber
+and found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened
+table-drawer she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's
+watch which he had pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory
+and found it filled with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then
+she returned to her own appartement and ordered the door to be broken
+open--her father had respected it!
+
+Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
+of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
+feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
+tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
+climax, brought about in Marguerite's soul one of those moral
+reactions against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned
+to the parlor to wait her father's arrival, in a state of anxiety that
+was cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was
+she about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the
+fasts his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason?
+Tears flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the
+desecrated sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts,
+her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,
+--all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all
+were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
+
+Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
+the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at
+once so grand and yet so miserable.
+
+The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
+eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
+who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking
+the philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened
+century, this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated
+his purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up
+to him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies
+are uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
+genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate
+in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and "tutti quanti." The
+people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of
+genius.
+
+These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from
+the bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity
+among persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,
+--two sentiments big with contempt and with the "vae victis" with which
+the masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune.
+Persons often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the
+rose window of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been
+consumed in smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they
+pointed to him with their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a
+mocking jest or a word of pity would escape the lips of a working-man
+or some mere child. But Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it
+was homage; he could deceive him with impunity, for though the old
+man's eyes retained the sublime clearness which results from the habit
+of living among great thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+
+To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+common consent "the House of Claes," was now called in the suburbs and
+the country districts "the Devil's House." Every outward sign, even
+the face of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were
+current about Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to
+purchase the few provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking
+out the cheapest he could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,
+--just as butchers slip bones into their customers' meat,--and he was
+fortunate, poor creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not
+refuse to sell him his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact
+with an imp of hell.
+
+Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand
+old man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes
+added to this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have
+seen better days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are
+ashamed to beg. It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would
+be insulted in the streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the
+family any public insult would be, had for some time past sent two or
+three of his own servants to follow the old man whenever he went out,
+and keep him in sight at a little distance, for the purpose of
+protecting him if necessary,--the revolution of July not having
+contributed to make the citizens respectful.
+
+By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the
+secret guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back
+from the ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the
+place Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to
+school. Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men,
+whose faces brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys
+began to talk of them. Generally, children's chatter ends in laughter;
+on this occasion the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know
+the cruelty. Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little
+distance, and examined the strange old faces with smothered laughter
+and remarks which attracted Lemulquinier's attention.
+
+"Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, he was born a Wise Man."
+
+"My papa says he makes gold," said another.
+
+The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and
+was devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and
+said boldly to Lemulquinier,--
+
+"Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?"
+
+"Yes, my little man," replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on
+the cheek; "we will give you some of you study well."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, give me some, too," was the general exclamation.
+
+The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the
+old men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by
+these sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general
+shout of laughter.
+
+"Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man," said Lemulquinier.
+
+"Hi, the old harlequin!" cried the lads; "the old sorcerer! you are
+sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!"
+
+Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his
+cane; they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A
+workman who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier
+brandish his cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them,
+and took their part, crying out,--
+
+"Down with the sorcerers!"
+
+The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the
+old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin's
+servants, appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were
+too late, however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted
+with mud. The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been
+preserved by a chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a
+quest of discovery that annihilates all passions, now suddenly
+divined, by the phenomenon of introsusception, the true meaning of the
+scene: his decrepit body could not sustain the frightful reaction he
+underwent in his feelings, and he fell, struck with paralysis, into
+the arms of Lemulquinier, who brought him to his home on a shutter,
+attended by his sons-in-law and their servants. No power could prevent
+the population of Douai from following the body of the old man to the
+door of his house, where Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite,
+and Gabriel, whom his sister had sent for, were waiting to receive
+him.
+
+The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he
+struggled less against the assaults of death than against the horror
+of seeing that his children had entered the house and penetrated the
+secret of his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the
+parlor and every care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition,
+towards evening, allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The
+paralysis, though skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state
+of semi-childhood; and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was
+found to be especially affected, perhaps because the old man's anger
+had concentrated all his forces upon it at the moment when he was
+about to apostrophize the children.
+
+This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
+law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
+this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
+more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
+that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
+his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
+to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
+late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
+the matter might be allowed to drop.
+
+Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
+tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
+At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of
+her he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not
+fall. He was able to press his daughter's hand with his cold fingers,
+putting into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no
+longer had the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in
+that farewell of the brain which still lived, of the heart which
+gratitude revived. Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the
+long struggle with the gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the
+oblivion which awaited his memory, this giant among men was about to
+die. His children surrounded him with respectful affection; his dying
+eyes were cheered with images of plenty and the touching picture of
+his prosperous and noble family. His every look--by which alone he
+could manifest his feelings--was unchangeably affectionate; his eyes
+acquired such variety of expression that they had, as it were, a
+language of light, easy to comprehend.
+
+Marguerite paid her father's debts, and restored a modern splendor to
+the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
+left the old man's bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought
+and accomplish his slightest wish.
+
+Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
+the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur
+Claes listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside
+his bed.
+
+Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
+critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was
+summoned by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change
+which took place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor
+remained to watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the
+throes of inward convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last
+agony.
+
+The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
+sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
+an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
+out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to
+his bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming
+death made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of
+his usual satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel,
+instigated by the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the
+usual reading might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar
+was evidently struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words,
+"DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,"--which startled him, and he read a
+paragraph to Marguerite concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish
+mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a
+low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar
+heard it.
+
+Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features
+were illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face
+and rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and
+uttered with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, "EUREKA!"
+--I have found.
+
+He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
+died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
+last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
+Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!
+--by the fleshless fingers of Death.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+
+Casa-Real, Duc de
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  A Marriage Settlement
+
+Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+
+Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  A Marriage Settlement
+
+Protez and Chiffreville
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Savaron de Savarus
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Albert Savarus
+
+Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Albert Savarus
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
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@@ -0,0 +1,7781 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+#38 in our series by Balzac
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+The Alkahest
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+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
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+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+BY
+HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+
+Translated By
+Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To Madame Josephine Delannoy nee Doumerc.
+
+  Madame, may God grant that this, my book, may live longer than I,
+  for then the gratitude which I owe to you, and which I hope will
+  equal your almost maternal kindness to me, would last beyond the
+  limits prescribed for human affection. This sublime privilege of
+  prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work
+  we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining
+  it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those
+  who aspire to such an immortality.
+
+  Yet again I say--May God grant it!
+
+DE BALZAC.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALKAHEST
+(THE HOUSE OF CLAES)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+There is a house at Douai in the rue de Paris, whose aspect, interior
+arrangements, and details have preserved, to a greater degree than
+those of other domiciles, the characteristics of the old Flemish
+buildings, so naively adapted to the patriarchal manners and customs
+of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well,
+in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such
+didactic preliminaries,--since they have roused a protest from certain
+ignorant and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing
+the generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without
+gestation. Is Art supposed to have higher powers than Nature?
+
+The events of human existence, whether public or private, are so
+closely allied to architecture that the majority of observers can
+reconstruct nations and individuals, in their habits and ways of life,
+from the remains of public monuments or the relics of a home.
+Archaeology is to social nature what comparative anatomy is to
+organized nature. A mosaic tells the tale of a society, as the
+skeleton of an ichthyosaurus opens up a creative epoch. All things are
+linked together, and all are therefore deducible. Causes suggest
+effects, effects lead back to causes. Science resuscitates even the
+warts of the past ages.
+
+Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
+provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential
+facts. The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the
+past; and to man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him
+what has been, and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is
+rare indeed that the picture of a locality where lives are lived does
+not recall to some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith.
+The comparison between a present which disappoints man's secret wishes
+and a future which may realize them, is an inexhaustible source of
+sadness or of placid content.
+
+Thus, it is almost impossible not to feel a certain tender sensibility
+over a picture of Flemish life, if the accessories are clearly given.
+Why so? Perhaps, among other forms of existence, it offers the best
+conclusion to man's uncertainties. It has its social festivities, its
+family ties, and the easy affluence which proves the stability of its
+comfortable well-being; it does not lack repose amounting almost to
+beatitude; but, above all, it expresses the calm monotony of a frankly
+sensuous happiness, where enjoyment stifles desire by anticipating it.
+Whatever value a passionate soul may attach to the tumultuous life of
+feeling, it never sees without emotion the symbols of this Flemish
+nature, where the throbbings of the heart are so well regulated that
+superficial minds deny the heart's existence. The crowd prefers the
+abnormal force which overflows to that which moves with steady
+persistence. The world has neither time nor patience to realize the
+immense power concealed beneath an appearance of uniformity.
+Therefore, to impress this multitude carried away on the current of
+existence, passion, like a great artist, is compelled to go beyond the
+mark, to exaggerate, as did Michael Angelo, Bianca Capello,
+Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Beethoven, and Paganini. Far-seeing minds
+alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy represented
+by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The
+life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions
+of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average
+citizen.
+
+A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life.
+English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the old-
+fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints,
+and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. There, work implies no
+weariness, and the pipe is a happy adaptation of Neapolitan "far-
+niente." Thence comes the peaceful sentiment in Art (its most
+essential condition), patience, and the element which renders its
+creations durable, namely, conscience. Indeed, the Flemish character
+lies in the two words, patience and conscience; words which seem at
+first to exclude the richness of poetic light and shade, and to make
+the manners and customs of the country as flat as its vast plains, as
+cold as its foggy skies. And yet it is not so. Civilization has
+brought her power to bear, and has modified all things, even the
+effects of climate. If we observe attentively the productions of
+various parts of the globe, we are surprised to find that the
+prevailing tints from the temperate zones are gray or fawn, while the
+more brilliant colors belong to the products of the hotter climates.
+The manners and customs of a country must naturally conform to this
+law of nature.
+
+Flanders, which in former times was essentially dun-colored and
+monotonous in tint, learned the means of irradiating its smoky
+atmosphere through its political vicissitudes, which brought it under
+the successive dominion of Burgundy, Spain, and France, and threw it
+into fraternal relations with Germany and Holland. From Spain it
+acquired the luxury of scarlet dyes and shimmering satins, tapestries
+of vigorous design, plumes, mandolins, and courtly bearing. In
+exchange for its linen and its laces, it brought from Venice that
+fairy glass-ware in which wine sparkles and seems the mellower. From
+Austria it learned the ponderous diplomacy which, to use a popular
+saying, takes three steps backward to one forward; while its trade
+with India poured into it the grotesque designs of China and the
+marvels of Japan.
+
+And yet, in spite of its patience in gathering such treasures, its
+tenacity in parting with no possession once gained, its endurance of
+all things, Flanders was considered nothing more than the general
+storehouse of Europe, until the day when the discovery of tobacco
+brought into one smoky outline the scattered features of its national
+physiognomy. Thenceforth, and notwithstanding the parcelling out of
+their territory, the Flemings became a people homogeneous through
+their pipes and beer.[*]
+
+[*] Flanders was parcelled into three divisions; of which Eastern
+    Flanders, capital Ghent, and Western Flanders, capital Bruges, are
+    two provinces of Belgium. French Flanders, capital Lille, is the
+    Departement du Nord of France. Douai, about twenty miles from
+    Lille, is the chief town of the arrondissement du Nord.
+
+After assimilating, by constant sober regulation of conduct, the
+products and the ideas of its masters and its neighbors, this country
+of Flanders, by nature so tame and devoid of poetry, worked out for
+itself an original existence, with characteristic manners and customs
+which bear no signs of servile imitation. Art stripped off its
+ideality and produced form alone. We may seek in vain for plastic
+grace, the swing of comedy, dramatic action, musical genius, or the
+bold flight of ode and epic. On the other hand, the people are fertile
+in discoveries, and trained to scientific discussions which demand
+time and the midnight oil. All things bear the ear-mark of temporal
+enjoyment. There men look exclusively to the thing that is: their
+thoughts are so scrupulously bent on supplying the wants of this life
+that they have never risen, in any direction, above the level of this
+present earth. The sole idea they have ever conceived of the future is
+that of a thrifty, prosaic statecraft: their revolutionary vigor came
+from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
+table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
+porches.
+
+The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
+comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
+craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
+compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
+on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
+the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
+houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
+monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and
+that of lace, a work of patient agriculture and still more patient
+industry, are hereditary like their family fortunes. If we were asked
+to show in human form the purest specimen of solid stability, we could
+do no better than point to a portrait of some old burgomaster,
+capable, as was proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way,
+and without the incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-
+town.
+
+Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
+which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
+ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one
+of the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of
+Flemish life.
+
+Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
+modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
+and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
+buildings are daily disappearing, and the manners and customs of a
+venerable past are being rapidly obliterated. Parisian ideas and
+fashions and modes of life now rule the day, and soon nothing will be
+left of that ancient Flemish life but the warmth of its hospitality,
+its traditional Spanish courtesy, and the wealth and cleanliness of
+Holland. Mansions of white stone are replacing the old brick
+buildings, and the cosy comfort of Batavian interiors is fast yielding
+before the capricious elegance of Parisian novelties.
+
+The house in which the events of this history occurred stands at about
+the middle of the rue de Paris, and has been known at Douai for more
+than two centuries as the House of Claes. The Van Claes were formerly
+one of the great families of craftsmen to whom, in various lines of
+production, the Netherlands owed a commercial supremacy which it has
+never lost. For a long period of time the Claes lived at Ghent, and
+were, from generation to generation, the syndics of the powerful Guild
+of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
+to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
+compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound
+to share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children,
+and property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The
+syndic's forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who
+were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though
+he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
+
+The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
+execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions
+in the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of
+martyrs gives the quickest harvest. When Philip the Second, who
+punished revolt through two generations, stretched his iron sceptre
+over Douai, the Claes preserved their great wealth by allying
+themselves in marriage with the very noble family of Molina, whose
+elder branch, then poor, thus became rich enough to buy the county of
+Nourho which they had long held titularly in the kingdom of Leon.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, after vicissitudes which
+are of no interest to our present purpose, the family of Claes was
+represented at Douai in the person of Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina,
+Comte de Nourho, who preferred to be called simply Balthazar Claes. Of
+the immense fortune amassed by his ancestors, who had kept in motion
+over a thousand looms, there remained to him some fifteen thousand
+francs a year from landed property in the arrondissement of Douai, and
+the house in the rue de Paris, whose furniture in itself was a
+fortune. As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in
+litigation between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family
+which remained in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and
+assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a
+legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to
+the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights were
+instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his Spanish
+nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
+
+The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families
+exiled under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth
+century, the Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and
+traditions of their ancestors. They married into none but the purest
+burgher families, and required a certain number of aldermen and
+burgomasters in the pedigree of every bride-elect before admitting her
+to the family. They sought their wives in Bruges or Ghent, in Liege or
+in Holland; so that the time-honored domestic customs might be
+perpetuated around their hearthstones. This social group became more
+and more restricted, until, at the close of the last century, it
+mustered only some seven or eight families of the parliamentary
+nobility, whose manners and flowing robes of office and magisterial
+gravity (partly Spanish) harmonized well with the habits of their
+life.
+
+The inhabitants of Douai held the family in a religious esteem that
+was well-nigh superstition. The sturdy honesty, the untainted loyalty
+of the Claes, their unfailing decorum of manners and conduct, made
+them the objects of a reverence which found expression in the name,--
+the House of Claes. The whole spirit of ancient Flanders breathed in
+that mansion, which afforded to the lovers of burgher antiquities a
+type of the modest houses which the wealthy craftsmen of the Middle
+Ages constructed for their homes.
+
+The chief ornament of the facade was an oaken door, in two sections,
+studded with nails driven in the pattern of a quineunx, in the centre
+of which the Claes pride had carved a pair of shuttles. The recess of
+the doorway, which was built of freestone, was topped by a pointed
+arch bearing a little shrine surmounted by a cross, in which was a
+statuette of Sainte-Genevieve plying her distaff. Though time had left
+its mark upon the delicate workmanship of portal and shrine, the
+extreme care taken of it by the servants of the house allowed the
+passers-by to note all its details.
+
+The casing of the door, formed by fluted pilasters, was dark gray in
+color, and so highly polished that it shone as if varnished. On either
+side of the doorway, on the ground-floor, were two windows, which
+resembled all the other windows of the house. The casing of white
+stone ended below the sill in a richly carved shell, and rose above
+the window in an arch, supported at its apex by the head-piece of a
+cross, which divided the glass sashes in four unequal parts; for the
+transversal bar, placed at the height of that in a Latin cross, made
+the lower sashes of the window nearly double the height of the upper,
+the latter rounding at the sides into the arch. The coping of the arch
+was ornamented with three rows of brick, placed one above the other,
+the bricks alternately projecting or retreating to the depth of an
+inch, giving the effect of a Greek moulding. The glass panes, which
+were small and diamond-shaped, were set in very slender leading,
+painted red. The walls of the house, of brick jointed with white
+mortar, were braced at regular distances, and at the angles of the
+house, by stone courses.
+
+The first floor was pierced by five windows, the second by three,
+while the attic had only one large circular opening in five divisions,
+surrounded by a freestone moulding and placed in the centre of the
+triangular pediment defined by the gable-roof, like the rose-window of
+a cathedral. At the peak was a vane in the shape of a weaver's shuttle
+threaded with flax. Both sides of the large triangular pediment which
+formed the wall of the gable were dentelled squarely into something
+like steps, as low down as the string-course of the upper floor, where
+the rain from the roof fell to right and left of the house through the
+jaws of a fantastic gargoyle. A freestone foundation projected like a
+step at the base of the house; and on either side of the entrance,
+between the two windows, was a trap-door, clamped by heavy iron bands,
+through which the cellars were entered,--a last vestige of ancient
+usages.
+
+From the time the house was built, this facade had been carefully
+cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks,
+the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings,
+were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre.
+The front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the
+deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well
+preserved as a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an
+amateur, which would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our
+climate and the effect of gases, whose pernicious breath threatens our
+own health.
+
+The cloudy skies and humid atmosphere of Flanders, and the shadows
+produced by the narrowness of the street, sometimes diminished the
+brilliancy which the old house derived from its cleanliness; moreover,
+the very care bestowed upon it made it rather sad and chilling to the
+eye. A poet might have wished some leafage about the shrine, a little
+moss in the crevices of the freestone, a break in the even courses of
+the brick; he would have longed for a swallow to build her nest in the
+red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and
+immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing,
+gave the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which
+would have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he
+happened to take lodgings over the way.
+
+When a visitor had pulled the braided iron wire bell-cord which hung
+from the top of the pilaster of the doorway, and the servant-woman,
+coming from within, had admitted him through the side of the double-
+door in which was a small grated loop-hole, that half of the door
+escaped from her hand and swung back by its own weight with a solemn,
+ponderous sound that echoed along the roof of a wide paved archway and
+through the depths of the house, as though the door had been of iron.
+This archway, painted to resemble marble, always clean and daily
+sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved with
+smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the linen-
+rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
+coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
+decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
+its way between four red walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy
+tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic
+appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
+
+A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
+Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the court-
+yard, and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room
+on the ground-floor was a parlor, lighted by two windows on the court-
+yard, and two more looking out upon a garden which was of the same
+size as the house. Two glass doors, placed exactly opposite to each
+other, led at one end of the room to the garden, at the other to the
+court-yard, and were in line with the archway and the street door; so
+that a visitor entering the latter could see through to the greenery
+which draped the lower end of the garden. The front building, which
+was reserved for receptions and the lodging-rooms of guests, held many
+objects of art and accumulated wealth, but none of them equalled in
+the eyes of a Claes, nor indeed in the judgment of a connoisseur, the
+treasures contained in the parlor, where for over two centuries the
+family life had glided on.
+
+The Claes who died for the liberties of Ghent, and who might in these
+days be thought a mere ordinary craftsman if the historian omitted to
+say that he possessed over forty thousand silver marks, obtained by
+the manufacture of sail-cloth for the all-powerful Venetian navy,--
+this Claes had a friend in the famous sculptor in wood, Van Huysum of
+Bruges. The artist had dipped many a time into the purse of the rich
+craftsman. Some time before the rebellion of the men of Ghent, Van
+Huysum, grown rich himself, had secretly carved for his friend a wall-
+decoration in ebony, representing the chief scenes in the life of Van
+Artevelde,--that brewer of Ghent who, for a brief hour, was King of
+Flanders. This wall-covering, of which there were no less than sixty
+panels, contained about fourteen hundred principal figures, and was
+held to be Van Huysum's masterpiece. The officer appointed to guard
+the burghers whom Charles V. determined to hang when he re-entered his
+native town, proposed, it is said, to Van Claes to let him escape if
+he would give him Van Huysum's great work; but the weaver had already
+despatched it to Douai.
+
+The parlor, whose walls were entirely panelled with this carving,
+which Van Huysum, out of regard for the martyr's memory, came to Douai
+to frame in wood painted in lapis-lazuli with threads of gold, is
+therefore the most complete work of this master, whose least carvings
+now sell for nearly their weight in gold. Hanging over the fire-place,
+Van Claes the martyr, painted by Titian in his robes as president of
+the Court of Parchons, still seemed the head of the family, who
+venerated him as their greatest man. The chimney-piece, originally in
+stone with a very high mantle-shelf, had been made over in marble
+during the last century; on it now stood an old clock and two
+candlesticks with five twisted branches, in bad taste, but of solid
+silver. The four windows were draped by wide curtains of red damask
+with a flowered black design, lined with white silk; the furniture,
+covered with the same material, had been renovated in the time of
+Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large squares of
+white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many
+oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
+had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native
+Dutch oak.
+
+In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
+candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
+stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
+symmetrically placed. On two gilded consoles with marble slabs there
+stood, at the period when this history begins, two glass globes filled
+with water, in which, above a bed of sand and shells, red and gold and
+silver fish were swimming about. The room was both brilliant and
+sombre. The ceiling necessarily absorbed the light and reflected none.
+Although on the garden side all was bright and glowing, and the
+sunshine danced upon the ebony carvings, the windows on the court-yard
+admitted so little light that the gold threads in the lapis-lazuli
+scarcely glittered on the opposite wall. This parlor, which could be
+gorgeous on a fine day, was usually, under the Flemish skies, filled
+with soft shadows and melancholy russet tones, like those shed by the
+sun on the tree-tops of the forests in autumn.
+
+It is unnecessary to continue this description of the House of Claes,
+in other parts of which many scenes of this history will occur: at
+present, it is enough to make known its general arrangement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
+woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
+looking out upon the garden. The sun's rays fell obliquely upon the
+house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
+carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson
+halo projected through the damask curtains which draped the window.
+Even an ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this
+particular moment, would assuredly have produced a striking picture of
+a head that was full of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body,
+and that of the feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration
+of one who loses consciousness of physical being in the concentration
+of powers absorbed in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in
+the far future, just as sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at
+a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line
+to the horizon.
+
+The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
+and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions.
+A dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
+as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
+folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
+light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show in
+preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
+impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
+expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
+that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most
+thoughtless mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive
+grief that is rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left
+on this woman's face like lava congealed about a crater. She might
+have been a dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal
+depths of wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human
+protector.
+
+The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
+nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
+the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
+heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead,
+very prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but
+beneath it sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting
+flames. Her face, altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color
+and pitted by the small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its
+oval, whose outline, though slightly impaired by time, preserved a
+finished elegance and dignity, and regained at times its full
+perfection when some effort of the soul restored its pristine purity.
+The most noticeable feature in this strong face was the nose, aquiline
+as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply curved at the middle as to
+give the idea of an interior malformation; yet there was an air of
+indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition between the
+nostrils was so thin that a rosy light shone through it. Though the
+lips, which were large and curved, betrayed the pride of noble birth,
+their expression was one of kindliness and natural courtesy.
+
+The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
+questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
+and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the
+world obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there
+were men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face
+and its tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm
+that was seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
+
+She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
+Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in
+earlier days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of
+poesy now emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any
+former period of her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void,
+and expressing a nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though
+it was at the same time powerless over destiny.
+
+When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
+the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
+to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
+God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
+the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
+hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
+moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing
+to serve the dinner.
+
+At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her
+abstraction and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped
+away her tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the
+expression of pain that was stamped on every feature that she
+presently seemed in the state of happy indifference which comes with a
+life exempt from care. Whether it were that the habit of living in
+this house to which infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive
+certain natural effects that are imperceptible to the senses of
+others, but which persons under the influence of excessive feeling are
+keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation for her physical
+defects, had given her more delicate sensations than better organized
+beings,--it is certain that this woman had heard the steps of a man in
+a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants' hall, by which
+the front house communicated with the "back-quarter." The steps grew
+more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent
+creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
+would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led
+down from the gallery to the parlor.
+
+The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being
+into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate,
+headlong step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries,
+"Fire!" his feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a
+contrary gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow
+approach, the dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an
+unreflecting spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would
+undoubtedly have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread
+of feet that seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked
+loudly, as though two iron weights were striking them alternately. The
+mind recognized at once either the heavy, undecided step of an old man
+or the majestic tread of a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
+
+When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
+upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
+still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
+servants' hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door
+concealed in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading
+from the parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder,
+like the sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated
+in the armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face,
+moved by the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian
+Madonna. She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into
+the depths of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the
+wall which she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now
+pushed in with such brusque violence that the poor woman herself
+seemed jarred by the shock.
+
+Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
+look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
+erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
+right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom
+herself, although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her
+smile, contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting
+that line which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so
+deeply; her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she
+looked at Balthazar.
+
+It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the
+family of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family
+martyr who had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but
+as he stood there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age,
+though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the
+honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because
+his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the
+spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad
+chest and square shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank
+and wasted, though nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical
+organization evidently once perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored
+to explain this anomalous figure by some possible singularities of the
+man's life.
+
+His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
+Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
+eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain
+protuberances which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and
+full blue eyes had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in
+searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life,
+was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened
+wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-
+bones were very prominent, which made the cheeks themselves, already
+withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed
+in between the nose and a short chin, which projected sharply. The
+shape of the face, however, was long rather than oval, and the
+scientific doctrine which sees in every human face a likeness to an
+animal would have found its confirmation in that of Balthazar Claes,
+which bore a strong resemblance to a horse's head. The skin clung
+closely to the bones, as though some inward fire were incessantly
+drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space, as if to see
+the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
+that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
+
+The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
+face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that
+of an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye,
+whose fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and
+by the inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes
+seemed to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the
+terrible reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The
+zealous fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this
+man; it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his
+mind expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with
+the anomalous peculiarities of his person.
+
+His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very
+long, had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not
+cleaned and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish
+household, the master alone took the strange liberty of being
+slovenly. His black cloth trousers were covered with stains, his
+waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at
+the seams,--completing an array of signs, great and small, which in
+any other man would have betokened a poverty begotten of vice, but
+which in Balthazar Claes was the negligence of genius.
+
+Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
+the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
+and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
+than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for
+vices than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The
+profits accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote
+that the social world fears to square accounts with the man of
+learning in his lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by
+not forgiving his misfortunes or his poverty.
+
+If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present,
+Balthazar Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some
+sweet and companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful
+countenance, if the fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone
+with feeling, if he had ever looked humanly about him and returned to
+the real life of common things, it would indeed have been difficult
+not to do involuntary homage to the winning beauty of his face and the
+gracious soul that would then have shone from it. As it was, all who
+looked at him regretted that the man belonged no more to the world at
+large, and said to one another: "He must have been very handsome in
+his youth." A vulgar error! Never was Balthazar Claes's appearance
+more poetic than at this moment. Lavater, had he seen him, would fain
+have studied that head so full of patience, of Flemish loyalty, and
+pure morality,--where all was broad and noble, and passion seemed calm
+because it was strong.
+
+The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
+sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
+complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
+service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
+elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household, to
+manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
+living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
+with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
+the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
+enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
+
+At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes
+that he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the
+woman who was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect,
+or nobility of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either
+they dress simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they
+make others forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which
+diverts the eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess
+a noble soul, but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the
+woman which gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up
+in one of the most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have
+learned good taste had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the
+desire of constantly pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to
+clothe herself admirably, and without producing incongruity between
+her elegance and the defects of her conformation. The bust, however,
+was defective in the shoulders only, one of which was noticeably much
+larger than the other.
+
+She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
+garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
+said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman's
+submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
+the pride of her Spanish nature:--
+
+"Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday
+since you have been to mass or vespers."
+
+Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands, and
+waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
+indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of
+those beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all
+their youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal
+to wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of
+physical disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a
+word, suffices to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel
+because it contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our
+nature leads us to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than
+pleasure coming in the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
+
+Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him,
+and said,--
+
+"Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers."
+
+He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
+magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
+short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
+
+"Why should they not combine within a given time?"
+
+"Is he going mad?" thought the wife, much terrified.
+
+To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
+by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to
+glance back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter
+of the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
+twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
+came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
+manners in the society of Madame d'Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince of
+Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
+originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or
+wealth won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time
+gave the tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and
+friends ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment
+when that world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at
+first more attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of
+life. He frequented the society of scientific men, particularly
+Lavoisier, who at that time was better known to the world for his
+enormous fortune as a "fermier-general" than for his discoveries in
+chemistry,--though later the great chemist was to eclipse the man of
+wealth.
+
+Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated, and
+became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
+Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
+and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
+that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
+those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
+finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
+society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
+
+The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
+Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
+his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so
+tender, which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far
+more fitted to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No
+gilded Parisian salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the
+panelled parlor and the little garden where his happy childhood had
+slipped away. A man must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--
+Paris, the city of cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp
+her with the arms of Science, Art, or Power.
+
+The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine's pigeon to
+its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
+Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
+of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
+had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar's father and mother
+had left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for
+a time in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to
+marry; he needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect
+had fastened upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of
+seeking a wife in Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened
+that no woman whom he met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had
+certain peculiar ideas as to marriage; from his youth he had been
+accused of never following the beaten track.
+
+One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
+then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a
+long discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck
+was destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that
+she was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar's old cousin, at
+whose house the discussion took place, assured his guests that,
+handsome or not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he
+a marrying man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of
+her parents' property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy
+of his name; thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing
+her future to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that
+Mademoiselle de Temninck would marry late in life and without property
+when, young and wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
+
+A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of
+Mademoiselle de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first,
+Josephine de Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice,
+and refused to listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious;
+and to a poor girl who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring
+love in a young and handsome man carries with it such strong seduction
+that she finally consented to allow him to woo her.
+
+It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
+submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
+feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
+and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
+cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--
+emotions, terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought,
+therefore, to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of
+love, is the keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find
+once more the lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles;
+the passionate exaltations of the heart which the face must not
+betray; the fear that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy
+of being so; the hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself,
+and the magnetic propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of
+shades; the promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an
+intonation; trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden
+desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the
+secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the
+mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine
+discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a
+flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love,
+and the weaknesses of its power.
+
+Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of
+soul. The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to
+win as the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the
+eye roused her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the
+courage to hide in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness
+which other women delight in making known by their manners,--wearing
+it proudly, like a coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar,
+the less she dared to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture,
+the question and answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to
+the man she loves, would they not be in her case mere humiliating
+speculation? A beautiful woman can be her natural self,--the world
+overlooks her little follies or her clumsiness; whereas a single
+criticising glance checks the noblest expression on the lips of an
+ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her gesture, gives timidity to
+her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing. She knows too well that
+to her alone the world condones no faults; she is denied the right to
+repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never given. This
+necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment, must
+surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
+exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the
+hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and
+stinging pity.
+
+These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
+and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her
+by the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making
+it apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
+of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest
+expression, and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her
+looks. Loving and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only
+when alone. Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she
+might have been enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow.
+Often, to test the love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing
+it, she refused to wear the draperies that concealed some portion of
+her defects, and her Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that
+Balthazar thought her beautiful as before.
+
+Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she
+yielded herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not
+seeking a domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house?
+whether he had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be
+satisfied with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a
+priceless value to the few short hours during which she trusted the
+sincerity and the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the
+world. Sometimes she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the
+inner consciousness of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such
+times she often wrung from Balthazar truths that were far from
+flattering; but she loved the embarrassment into which he fell when
+she had led him to say that what he loved in a woman was a noble soul
+and the devotion which made each day of life a constant happiness; and
+that after a few years of married life the handsomest of women was no
+more to a husband than the ugliest. After gathering up what there was
+of truth in all such paradoxes tending to reduce the value of beauty,
+Balthazar would suddenly perceive the ungraciousness of his remarks,
+and show the goodness of his heart by the delicate transitions of
+thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de Temninck that she was
+perfect in his eyes.
+
+The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
+woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
+being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling and
+sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
+fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did
+not believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however
+short its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
+
+Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
+unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
+with a love that was well-nigh chivalric.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The marriage took place at the beginning of the year 1795. Husband and
+wife came to Douai that the first days of their union might be spent
+in the patriarchal house of the Claes,--the treasures of which were
+increased by those of Mademoiselle de Temninck, who brought with her
+several fine pictures of Murillo and Velasquez, the diamonds of her
+mother, and the magnificent wedding-gifts, made to her by her brother,
+the Duke of Casa-Real.
+
+Few women were ever happier than Madame Claes. Her happiness lasted
+for fifteen years without a cloud, diffusing itself like a vivid light
+into every nook and detail of her life. Most men have inequalities of
+character which produce discord, and deprive their households of the
+harmony which is the ideal of a home; the majority are blemished with
+some littleness or meanness, and meanness of any kind begets
+bickering. One man is honorable and diligent, but hard and crabbed;
+another kindly, but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will
+is arbitrary and uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays
+off his affections as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth
+but deprives the daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man
+of social life is essentially incomplete, without being signally to
+blame. Men of talent are as variable as barometers; genius alone is
+intrinsically good.
+
+For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
+the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are
+capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
+equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
+asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
+in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which
+he is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in
+principle and application. Both natures are equally simple; but in one
+there is vacancy, in the other depth. This is why clever women are
+disposed to take dull men as the small change for great ones.
+
+Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life.
+He delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and
+like all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished
+to develop all its beauties. His powers of mind enlivened the calm of
+happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of
+grace. Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth
+century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of
+the risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not
+thwart the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her
+mother's milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he
+accompanied her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be
+that of a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was
+never exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity.
+He treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes
+mutinied against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of
+a pretty woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was
+ever tender; he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with
+an ardor that crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the
+loveliness of a wife.
+
+Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
+self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
+and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
+was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love
+was equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting
+realization of his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was
+satisfied but not wearied, the man within him was ever happy.
+
+Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood
+the intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it
+infinite, but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion,
+which is the genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love
+was a blind fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously
+to her death. Balthazar's own delicacy had exalted the generous
+emotions of his wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of
+giving more than she received. This mutual exchange of happiness which
+each lavished upon the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly
+outside of her personality, and filled her words, her looks, her
+actions, with an ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied
+the life of each heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one
+another excluded the paltry things of existence, while it magnified
+the smallest accessories.
+
+The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman
+whom he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--
+are they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human
+passion go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a
+defect. To forget that a lame woman does not walk straight may be the
+glamour of a moment, but to love her because she is lame is the
+deification of her defects. In the gospel of womanhood it is written:
+"Blessed are the imperfect, for theirs is the kingdom of Love." If
+this be so, surely beauty is a misfortune; that fugitive flower counts
+for too much in the feeling that a woman inspires; often she is loved
+for her beauty as another is married for her money. But the love
+inspired or bestowed by a woman disinherited of the frail advantages
+pursued by the sons of Adam, is true love, the mysterious passion, the
+ardent embrace of souls, a sentiment for which the day of
+disenchantment never comes. That woman has charms unknown to the
+world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws herself: she is beautiful
+with a meaning; her glory lies in making her imperfections forgotten,
+and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
+
+The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by
+women in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra,
+Jeanne de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere,
+Madame de Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has
+rendered famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while
+the greater number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to
+some tragic end of love.
+
+This apparent singularity must have a cause. It may be that man lives
+more by sentiment than by sense; perhaps the physical charm of beauty
+is limited, while the moral charm of a woman without beauty is
+infinite. Is not this the moral of the fable on which the Arabian
+Nights are based? An ugly wife of Henry VIII. might have defied the
+axe, and subdued to herself the inconstancy of her master.
+
+By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish
+origin, Madame Claes was uneducated. She knew how to read and write,
+but up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her
+from a convent, she had read none but ascetic books. On her first
+entrance into the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only
+the flimsy art of dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her
+ignorance that she dared not join in conversation; for which reason
+she was supposed to have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a
+convent had one good result; it left her feelings in full force and
+her natural powers of mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress
+in the eyes of the world, she became intellectual and beautiful to her
+husband. During the first years of their married life, Balthazar
+endeavored to give her at least the knowledge that she needed to
+appear to advantage in good society: but he was doubtless too late,
+she had no memory but that of the heart. Josephine never forgot
+anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she remembered
+the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her
+evening studies nothing remained to her on the morrow.
+
+This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and
+wife, but Madame Claes's understanding of the passion of love was so
+simple and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so
+sacredly, and the thought of preserving her happiness made her so
+adroit, that she managed always to seem to understand him, and it was
+seldom indeed that her ignorance was evident. Moreover, when two
+persons love one another so well that each day seems for them the
+beginning of their passion, phenomena arise out of this teeming
+happiness which change all the conditions of life. It resembles
+childhood, careless of all that is not laughter, joy, and merriment.
+Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow, man lets
+the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering
+either the means or the end.
+
+No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife
+than Madame Claes. She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but
+her Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor. Her bearing was imposing;
+she knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of
+birth and dignity: but she trembled before Claes; she held him so
+high, so near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every
+thought of her heart, that her love was not without a certain
+respectful fear which made it keener. She proudly assumed all the
+habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the
+home life liberally happy,--preserving every detail of the house in
+scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing that did not serve the
+purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with the choicest food,
+and putting everything within those walls into harmony with the life
+of her heart.
+
+The pair had two sons and two daughters. The eldest, Marguerite, was
+born in 1796. The last child was a boy, now three years old, named
+Jean-Balthazar. The maternal sentiment in Madame Claes was almost
+equal to her love for her husband; and there rose in her soul,
+especially during the last days of her life, a terrible struggle
+between those nearly balanced feelings, of which the one became, as it
+were, an enemy of the other. The tears and the terror that marked her
+face at the moment when this tale of a domestic drama then lowering
+over the quiet house begins, were caused by the fear of having
+sacrificed her children to her husband.
+
+In 1805, Madame Claes's brother died without children. The Spanish law
+does not allow a sister to succeed to territorial possessions, which
+follow the title; but the duke had left her in his will about sixty
+thousand ducats, and this sum the heirs of the collateral branch did
+not seek to retain. Though the feeling which united her to Balthazar
+Claes was such that no thought of personal interest could ever sully
+it, Josephine felt a certain pleasure in possessing a fortune equal to
+that of her husband, and was happy in giving something to one who had
+so nobly given everything to her. Thus, a mere chance turned a
+marriage which worldly minds had declared foolish, into an excellent
+alliance, seen from the standpoint of material interests. The use to
+which this sum of money should be put became, however, somewhat
+difficult to determine.
+
+The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures,
+and objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add
+anything worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family
+through long periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One
+generation followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the
+necessity of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the
+taste became hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which
+adorned the gallery leading from the family building to the reception-
+rooms on the first floor of the front house, as well as some fifty
+others placed about the salons, were the product of the patient
+researches of three centuries. Among them were choice specimens of
+Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul
+Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French
+and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and
+masterly.
+
+Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
+Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in
+fact, each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which
+belongs in a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of
+Balthazar, a last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind
+him the finest known collection of tulips.
+
+Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous
+capital, and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house
+that was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within
+by pearls of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes
+possessed a country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai.
+Instead of basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he
+followed the old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income.
+Twelve hundred ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with
+those of the richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil
+Code proved the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the
+equal division of property, the Title of Succession would some day
+leave each child with limited means, and disperse the treasures of the
+Claes collection. Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes,
+invested his wife's property so as to secure to each child a fortune
+eventually equal to his own. The house of Claes still maintained its
+moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for
+wars that had laid waste the country, but which in ten years' time, if
+well-preserved, would return an enormous value.
+
+The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
+appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
+that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
+which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season,
+when she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to
+her. She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every
+month. Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house;
+where, indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed
+on the education of her children tended to keep her.
+
+Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
+household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
+conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
+secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people.
+Balthazar Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to
+perpetuate, seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn
+vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far
+better than the cultivation of tulips (though to that he had always
+had a leaning), and dispensed him from the duty of following a mania
+like his ancestors.
+
+At the close of this year, the mind and the manners of Balthazar Claes
+underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
+first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause.
+One night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she
+felt it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and
+her submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar's
+confidence; which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an
+affection that she had never had the slightest opening for jealousy.
+Though certain of obtaining an answer whenever she should make the
+inquiry, she still retained enough of the earlier impressions of her
+life to dread a refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had
+its phases, and only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at
+which it destroyed the happiness of the family.
+
+However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several
+months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his
+character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.
+Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of
+the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought,
+he would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are
+led by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make
+them known at the moment of success. When the day of triumph came,
+surely domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when
+Balthazar became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his
+heart would surely disavow. Josephine knew her husband well enough to
+be certain that he would never forgive himself for having made his
+Pepita less than happy during several months.
+
+She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering
+by him for him: her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which
+allows no separation between religion and love, and believes in no
+sentiment without suffering. She waited for the return of her
+husband's affection, saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"
+--treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.
+
+During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last
+child. Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the
+midst of her husband's abstractions love showed itself on this
+occasion an abstraction even greater than the rest. Her woman's pride,
+hurt for the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown
+abyss which separated her from the Claes of earlier days. From that
+time Balthazar's condition grew rapidly worse. The man formerly so
+wrapped up in his domestic happiness, who played for hours with his
+children on the parlor carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed
+able to exist only in the light of his Pepita's dark eyes, did not
+even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family life, and even
+forgot his own.
+
+The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his
+preoccupation the less she dared to do so. At the very idea, her blood
+ran cold and her voice grew faint. At last the thought occurred to her
+that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was
+seriously alarmed. That fear now filled her mind, drove her to
+despair, then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an
+hour of melancholy reverie. She defended Balthazar at her own expense,
+calling herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though
+humiliating consideration for her in this secret occupation by which
+he secured to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him
+back his independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which
+make the happiness of many a marriage.
+
+Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some
+attempt to read her husband's heart, and found it closed. Little by
+little, she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly
+loved; he neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children.
+There could be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that
+was not of the heart, but which, to a woman's mind, is not less
+withering. His love was dormant, not lost: this might be a
+consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.
+
+The continuance of such a state of things is explained by one word,--
+hope, the secret of all conjugal situations. It so happened that
+whenever the poor woman reached a depth of despair which gave her
+courage to question her husband, she met with a few brief moments of
+happiness when she was able to feel that if Balthazar was indeed in
+the clutch of some devilish power, he was permitted, sometimes at
+least, to return to himself. At such moments, when her heaven
+brightened, she was too eager to enjoy its happiness to trouble him
+with importunate questions: later, when she endeavored to speak to
+him, he would suddenly escape, leave her abruptly, or drop into the
+gulf of meditation from which no word of hers could drag him.
+
+Before long the reaction of the moral upon the physical condition
+began its ravages,--at first imperceptibly, except to the eyes of a
+loving woman following the secret thought of a husband through all its
+manifestations. Often she could scarcely restrain her tears when she
+saw him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the
+fireplace, and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with
+terror the slow changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her
+eyes, sublime through love: the life of the soul was retreating from
+it; the structure remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the
+eyes were glassy, and seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were
+looking inward. When the children had gone to bed, and the silence and
+solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say, "My friend, are you ill?"
+and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he answered, he would come
+to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and
+utter a "No" so harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the
+palpitating heart of his wife.
+
+Though she tried to hide this strange state of things from her
+friends, Madame Claes was obliged sometimes to allude to it. The
+social world of Douai, in accordance with the custom of provincial
+towns, had made Balthazar's aberrations a topic of conversation, and
+many persons were aware of certain details that were still unknown to
+Madame Claes. Disregarding the reticence which politeness demanded, a
+few friends expressed to her so much anxiety on the subject that she
+found herself compelled to defend her husband's peculiarities.
+
+"Monsieur Claes," she said, "has undertaken a work which wholly
+absorbs him; its success will eventually redound not only to the honor
+of the family but to that of his country."
+
+This mysterious explanation was too flattering to the ambition of a
+town whose local patriotism and desire for glory exceed those of other
+places, not to be readily accepted, and it produced on all minds a
+reaction in favor of Balthazar.
+
+The supposition of his wife was, to a certain extent, well-founded.
+Several artificers of various trades had long been at work in the
+garret of the front house, where Balthazar went early every morning.
+After remaining, at first, for several hours, an absence to which his
+wife and household grew gradually accustomed, he ended by being there
+all day. But--unexpected shock!--Madame Claes learned through the
+humiliating medium of some women friends, who showed surprise at her
+ignorance, that her husband constantly imported instruments of
+physical science, valuable materials, books, machinery, etc., from
+Paris, and was on the highroad to ruin in search of the Philosopher's
+Stone. She ought, so her kind friends added, to think of her children,
+and her own future; it was criminal not to use her influence to draw
+Monsieur Claes from the fatal path on which he had entered.
+
+Though Madame Claes, with the tone and manner of a great lady,
+silenced these absurd speeches, she was inwardly terrified in spite of
+her apparent confidence, and she resolved to break through her present
+system of silence and resignation. She brought about one of those
+little scenes in which husband and wife are on an equal footing; less
+timid at such a moment, she dared to ask Balthazar the reason for his
+change, the motive of his constant seclusion. The Flemish husband
+frowned, and replied:--
+
+"My dear, you could not understand it."
+
+Soon after, however, Josephine insisted on being told the secret,
+gently complaining that she was not allowed to share all the thoughts
+of one whose life she shared.
+
+"Very well, since it interests you so much," said Balthazar, taking
+his wife upon his knee and caressing her black hair, "I will tell you
+that I have returned to the study of chemistry, and I am the happiest
+man on earth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Two years after the winter when Monsieur Claes returned to chemistry,
+the aspect of his house was changed. Whether it were that society was
+affronted by his perpetual absent-mindedness and chose to think itself
+in the way, or that Madame Claes's secret anxieties made her less
+agreeable than before, certain it is that she no longer saw any but
+her intimate friends. Balthazar went nowhere, shut himself up in his
+laboratory all day, sometimes stayed there all night, and only
+appeared in the bosom of his family at dinner-time.
+
+After the second year he no longer passed the summer at his country-
+house, and his wife was unwilling to live there alone. Sometimes he
+went to walk and did not return till the following day, leaving Madame
+Claes a prey to mortal anxiety during the night. After causing a
+fruitless search for him through the town, whose gates, like those of
+other fortified places, were closed at night, it was impossible to
+send into the country, and the unhappy woman could only wait and
+suffer till morning. Balthazar, who had forgotten the hour at which
+the gates closed, would come tranquilly home next day, quite unmindful
+of the tortures his absence had inflicted on his family; and the
+happiness of getting him back proved as dangerous an excitement of
+feeling to his wife as her fears of the preceding night. She kept
+silence and dared not question him, for when she did so on the
+occasion of his first absence, he answered with an air of surprise:--
+
+"Well, what of it? Can I not take a walk?"
+
+Passions never deceive. Madame Claes's anxieties corroborated the
+rumors she had taken so much pains to deny. The experience of her
+youth had taught her to understand the polite pity of the world.
+Resolved not to undergo it a second time, she withdrew more and more
+into the privacy of her own house, now deserted by society and even by
+her nearest friends.
+
+Among these many causes of distress, the negligence and disorder of
+Balthazar's dress, so degrading to a man of his station, was not the
+least bitter to a woman accustomed to the exquisite nicety of Flemish
+life. At first Josephine endeavored, in concert with Balthazar's
+valet, Lemulquinier, to repair the daily devastation of his clothing,
+but even that she was soon forced to give up. The very day when
+Balthazar, unaware of the substitution, put on new clothes in place of
+those that were stained, torn, or full of holes, he made rags of them.
+
+The poor wife, whose perfect happiness had lasted fifteen years,
+during which time her jealousy had never once been roused, was
+apparently and suddenly nothing in the heart where she had lately
+reigned. Spanish by race, the feelings of a Spanish woman rose within
+her when she discovered her rival in a Science that allured her
+husband from her: torments of jealousy preyed upon her heart and
+renewed her love. What could she do against Science? Should she combat
+that tyrannous, unyielding, growing power? Could she kill an invisible
+rival? Could a woman, limited by nature, contend with an Idea whose
+delights are infinite, whose attractions are ever new? How make head
+against the fascination of ideas that spring the fresher and the
+lovelier out of difficulty, and entice a man so far from this world
+that he forgets even his dearest loves?
+
+At last one day, in spite of Balthazar's strict orders, Madame Claes
+resolved to follow him, to shut herself up in the garret where his
+life was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
+her husband's labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
+mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious
+laboratory of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always.
+Lemulquinier alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him;
+but to prevent his witnessing the contention with her husband which
+she feared at the outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet
+should be out of the way. For a while she studied the goings and
+comings of the man with angry impatience; did he not know that which
+was denied to her--all that her husband hid from her, all that she
+dared not inquire into? Even a servant was preferred to a wife!
+
+The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy.
+For the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar's anger. She
+had hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her,
+threw her roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped
+rolling to the bottom.
+
+"God be praised! you are still alive!" he cried, raising her.
+
+A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw
+her husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.
+
+"My dear, I forbade you to come here," he said, sitting down on the
+stairs, as though prostrated. "The saints have saved your life! By
+what chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it?
+We have just escaped death."
+
+"Then I might have been happy!" she exclaimed.
+
+"My experiment has failed," continued Balthazar. "You alone could I
+forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
+nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs."
+
+Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
+
+"Decompose nitrogen!" said the poor woman as she re-entered her
+chamber, and burst into tears.
+
+The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to
+have a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing
+it is for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man
+she loves. More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let
+us know when the language of their souls is not understood by us; they
+shrink from letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and
+hide their pain as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having
+higher ambitions in love than men, they desire to wed not only the
+heart of a husband, but his mind.
+
+To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which
+absorbed her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty
+of a rival might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman
+gives to her who loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a
+mortification like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and
+humiliated the feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she
+had reached a point where her ignorance parted her from her husband.
+Worse than all, last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he
+was often in danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share,
+nor even know, his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral
+prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.
+Madame Claes resolved to know at least the outward attractions of this
+fatal science, and she began secretly to study chemistry in the books.
+From this time the family became, as it were, cloistered.
+
+Such were the successive changes brought by this dire misfortune upon
+the family of Claes, before it reached the species of atrophy in which
+we find it at the moment when this history begins.
+
+The situation grew daily more complicated. Like all passionate women,
+Madame Claes was disinterested. Those who truly love know that
+considerations of money count for little in matters of feeling and are
+reluctantly associated with them. Nevertheless, Josephine did not hear
+without distress that her husband had borrowed three hundred thousand
+francs upon his property. The apparent authenticity of the
+transaction, the rumors and conjectures spread through the town,
+forced Madame Claes, naturally much alarmed, to question her husband's
+notary and, disregarding her pride, to reveal to him her secret
+anxieties or let him guess them, and even ask her the humiliating
+question,--
+
+"How is it that Monsieur Claes has not told you of this?"
+
+Happily, the notary was almost a relation,--in this wise: The
+grandfather of Monsieur Claes had married a Pierquin of Antwerp, of
+the same family as the Pierquins of Douai. Since the marriage the
+latter, though strangers to the Claes, claimed them as cousins.
+Monsieur Pierquin, a young man twenty-six years of age, who had just
+succeeded to his father's practice, was the only person who now had
+access to the House of Claes.
+
+Madame Balthazar had lived for several months in such complete
+solitude that the notary was obliged not only to confirm the rumor of
+the disasters, but to give her further particulars, which were now
+well known throughout the town. He told her that it was probably that
+her husband owed considerable sums of money to the house which
+furnished him with chemicals. That house, after making inquiries as to
+the fortune and credit of Monsieur Claes, accepted all his orders and
+sent the supplies without hesitation, notwithstanding the heavy sums
+of money which became due. Madame Claes requested Pierquin to obtain
+the bill for all the chemicals that had been furnished to her husband.
+
+Two months later, Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, manufacturers of
+chemical products, sent in a schedule of accounts rendered, which
+amounted to over one hundred thousand francs. Madame Claes and
+Pierquin studied the document with an ever-increasing surprise. Though
+some articles, entered in commercial and scientific terms, were
+unintelligible to them, they were frightened to see entries of
+precious metals and diamonds of all kinds, though in small quantities.
+The large sum total of the debt was explained by the multiplicity of
+the articles, by the precautions needed in transporting some of them,
+more especially valuable machinery, by the exorbitant price of certain
+rare chemicals, and finally by the cost of instruments made to order
+after the designs of Monsieur Claes himself.
+
+The notary had made inquiries, in his client's interest, as to
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known
+integrity was sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their
+operations with Monsieur Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently
+sent information of results obtained by chemists in Paris, for the
+purpose of sparing him expense. Madame Claes begged the notary to keep
+the nature of these purchases from the knowledge of the people of
+Douai, lest they should declare the whole thing a mania; but Pierquin
+replied that he had already delayed to the very last moment the
+notarial deeds which the importance of the sum borrowed necessitated,
+in order not to lessen the respect in which Monsieur Claes was held.
+He then revealed the full extent of the evil, telling her plainly that
+if she could not find means to prevent her husband from thus madly
+making way with his property, in six months the patrimonial fortune of
+the Claes would be mortgaged to its full value. As for himself, he
+said, the remonstrances he had already made to his cousin, with all
+the consideration due to a man so justly respected, had been wholly
+unavailing. Balthazar had replied, once for all, that he was working
+for the fame and the fortune of his family.
+
+Thus, to the tortures of the heart which Madame Claes had borne for
+two years--one following the other with cumulative suffering--was now
+added a dreadful and ceaseless fear which made the future terrifying.
+Women have presentiments whose accuracy is often marvellous. Why do
+they fear so much more than they hope in matters that concern the
+interests of this life? Why is their faith given only to religious
+ideas of a future existence? Why do they so ably foresee the
+catastrophes of fortune and the crises of fate? Perhaps the sentiment
+which unites them to the men they love gives them a sense by which
+they weigh force, measure faculties, understand tastes, passions,
+vices, virtues. The perpetual study of these causes in the midst of
+which they live gives them, no doubt, the fatal power of foreseeing
+effects in all possible relations of earthly life. What they see of
+the present enables them to judge of the future with an intuitive
+ability explained by the perfection of their nervous system, which
+allows them to seize the lightest indications of thought and feeling.
+Their whole being vibrates in communion with great moral convulsions.
+Either they feel, or they see.
+
+Now, although separated from her husband for over two years, Madame
+Claes foresaw the loss of their property. She fully understood the
+deliberate ardor, the well-considered, inalterable steadfastness of
+Balthazar; if it were indeed true that he was seeking to make gold, he
+was capable of throwing his last crust into the crucible with absolute
+indifference. But what was he really seeking? Up to this time maternal
+feeling and conjugal love had been so mingled in the heart of this
+woman that the children, equally beloved by husband and wife, had
+never come between them. Suddenly she found herself at times more
+mother than wife, though hitherto she had been more wife than mother.
+However ready she had been to sacrifice her fortune and even her
+children to the man who had chosen her, loved her, adored her, and to
+whom she was still the only woman in the world, the remorse she felt
+for the weakness of her maternal love threw her into terrible
+alternations of feeling. As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a
+mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
+
+She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
+sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must
+be guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach
+him for the use he now made of his fortune, after the
+disinterestedness he had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to
+judge his purposes? And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit
+of the law, told her that parents were the depositaries and guardians
+of property, and possessed no right to alienate the material welfare
+of the children. To escape replying to such stern questions she
+preferred to shut her eyes, like one who refuses to see the abyss into
+whose depths he knows he is about to fall.
+
+For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
+household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
+ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed the
+family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
+governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
+the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
+families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
+feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
+made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his
+stable and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his
+present occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of
+his establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes
+suppressed the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her
+present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so
+without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So
+far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future
+was more becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living
+called for no explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one
+who lives up to his income is considered a madman.
+
+And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
+birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and
+to place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the
+Molinas, the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days
+before the one on which this story opens, the money derived from the
+sale of the diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three
+o'clock in the afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to
+vespers, she met Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who
+turned and accompanied her to the church, talking in a low voice of
+her situation.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said, "unless I fail in the friendship which
+binds me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your
+position, nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who
+but you can hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The
+rents from the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on
+the sums he has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your
+last chance of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this
+moment thirty thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville.
+How can you pay them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in
+sending for reagents, retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such
+playthings, what will become of you? Your whole property, except the
+house and furniture, has been dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday
+he talked of mortgaging the house, and in answer to a remark of mine,
+he cried out, 'The devil!' It was the first sign of reason I have
+known him show for three years."
+
+Madame Claes pressed the notary's arm, and said in a tone of
+suffering, "Keep it secret."
+
+Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor
+woman, pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair
+between her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its
+leaves; her mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her
+husband. The Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded
+in her soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her
+children was accomplished! Between them and their father's honor she
+must no longer hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her
+husband terrified her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that
+the mere prospect of his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the
+divine wrath. She must now depart from the submission she had sacredly
+practised as a wife. The interests of her children compelled her to
+oppose, in his most cherished tastes, the man she idolized. Must she
+not daily force him back to common matters from the higher realms of
+Science; drag him forcibly from a smiling future and plunge him into a
+materialism hideous to artists and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes
+was a Titan of science, a man big with glory; he could only have
+forgotten her for the riches of a mighty hope. Then too, was he not
+profoundly wise? she had heard him talk with such good sense on every
+subject that he must be sincere when he declared he worked for the
+glory and prosperity of his family. His love for his wife and family
+was not only vast, it was infinite. That feeling could not be extinct;
+it was magnified, and reproduced in another form.
+
+Noble, generous, timid as she was, she prepared herself to ring into
+the ears of this noble man the word and the sound of money, to show
+him the sores of poverty, and force him to hear cries of distress when
+he was listening only for the melodious voice of Fame. Perhaps his
+love for her would lessen! If she had had no children, she would
+bravely and joyously have welcomed the new destiny her husband was
+making for her. Women who are brought up in opulence are quick to feel
+the emptiness of material enjoyments; and when their hearts, more
+wearied than withered, have once learned the happiness of a constant
+interchange of real feelings, they feel no shrinking from reduced
+outward circumstances, provided they are still acceptable to the man
+who has loved them. Their wishes, their pleasures, are subordinated to
+the caprices of that other life outside of their own; to them the only
+dreadful future is to lose him.
+
+At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her
+true life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And
+thus, when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the
+deep armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her
+children, directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a
+message to her husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished
+to see him. But although the old valet did his best to make his master
+leave the laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus
+gained time for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to
+the hour nor the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs
+that could not be paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that
+of the present and the future. This influx of painful interests,
+ideas, and feelings overcame her, and she wept.
+
+As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
+of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more
+distracted than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she
+was magnetized for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied
+of all expression, by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled
+from that bald brow. Under the shock of this impression she wished to
+die. But when she heard the callous voice, uttering a scientific wish
+at the moment when her heart was breaking, her courage came back to
+her; she resolved to struggle with that awful power which had torn a
+lover from her arms, a father from her children, a fortune from their
+home, happiness from all. And yet she could not repress a trepidation
+which made her quiver; in all her life no such solemn scene as this
+had taken place. This dreadful moment--did it not virtually contain
+her future, and gather within it all the past?
+
+Weak and timid persons, or those whose excessive sensibility magnifies
+the smallest difficulties of life, men who tremble involuntarily
+before the masters of their fate, can now, one and all, conceive the
+rush of thoughts that crowded into the brain of this woman, and the
+feelings under the weight of which her heart was crushed as her
+husband slowly crossed the room towards the garden-door. Most women
+know that agony of inward deliberation in which Madame Claes was
+writhing. Even one whose heart has been tried by nothing worse than
+the declaration to a husband of some extravagance, or a debt to a
+dress-maker, will understand how its pulses swell and quicken when the
+matter is one of life itself.
+
+A beautiful or graceful woman might have thrown herself at her
+husband's feet, might have called to her aid the attitudes of grief;
+but to Madame Claes the sense of physical defects only added to her
+fears. When she saw Balthazar about to leave the room, her impulse was
+to spring towards him; then a cruel thought restrained her--she should
+stand before him! would she not seem ridiculous in the eyes of a man
+no longer under the glamour of love--who might see true? She resolved
+to avoid all dangerous chances at so solemn a moment, and remained
+seated, saying in a clear voice,
+
+"Balthazar."
+
+He turned mechanically and coughed; then, paying no attention to his
+wife, he walked to one of the little square boxes that are placed at
+intervals along the wainscoting of every room in Holland and Belgium,
+and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never
+forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine,
+unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which
+her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an
+unspeakable pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it
+put her beside herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience,
+which expressed her wounded feelings,--
+
+"Monsieur, I am speaking to you!"
+
+"What does that mean?" answered Balthazar, turning quickly, and
+casting a look of reviving intelligence upon his wife, which fell upon
+her like a thunderbolt.
+
+"Forgive me, my friend," she said, turning pale. She tried to rise and
+put out her hand to him, but her strength gave way and she fell back.
+"I am dying!" she cried in a voice choked by sobs.
+
+At the sight Balthazar had, like all abstracted persons, a vivid
+reaction of mind; and he divined, so to speak, the secret cause of
+this attack. Taking Madame Claes at once in his arms, he opened the
+door upon the little antechamber, and ran so rapidly up the ancient
+wooden staircase that his wife's dress having caught on the jaws of
+one of the griffins that supported the balustrade, a whole breadth was
+torn off with a loud noise. He kicked in the door of the vestibule
+between their chambers, but the door of Josephine's bedroom was
+locked.
+
+He gently placed her on a chair, saying to himself, "My God! the key,
+where is the key?"
+
+"Thank you, dear friend," said Madame Claes, opening her eyes. "This
+is the first time for a long, long while that I have been so near your
+heart."
+
+"Good God!" cried Claes, "the key!--here come the servants."
+
+Josephine signed to him to take a key that hung from a ribbon at her
+waist. After opening the door, Balthazar laid his wife on a sofa, and
+left the room to stop the frightened servants from coming up by giving
+them orders to serve the dinner; then he went back to Madame Claes.
+
+"What is it, my dear life?" he said, sitting down beside her, and
+taking her hand and kissing it.
+
+"Nothing--now," she answered. "I suffer no longer. Only, I would I had
+the power of God to pour all the gold of the world at thy feet."
+
+"Why gold?" he asked. He took her in his arms, pressed her to him and
+kissed her once more upon the forehead. "Do you not give me the
+greatest of all riches in loving me as you do love me, my dear and
+precious wife?"
+
+"Oh! my Balthazar, will you not drive away the anguish of our lives as
+your voice now drives out the misery of my heart? At last, at last, I
+see that you are still the same."
+
+"What anguish do you speak of, dear?"
+
+"My friend, we are ruined."
+
+"Ruined!" he repeated. Then, with a smile, he stroked her hand,
+holding it within his own, and said in his tender voice, so long
+unheard: "To-morrow, dear love, our wealth may perhaps be limitless.
+Yesterday, in searching for a far more important secret, I think I
+found the means of crystallizing carbon, the substance of the diamond.
+Oh, my dear wife! in a few days' time you will forgive me all my
+forgetfulness--I am forgetful sometimes, am I not? Was I not harsh to
+you just now? Be indulgent for a man who never ceases to think of you,
+whose toils are full of you--of us."
+
+"Enough, enough!" she said, "let us talk of it all to-night, dear
+friend. I suffered from too much grief, and now I suffer from too much
+joy."
+
+"To-night," he resumed; "yes, willingly: we will talk of it. If I fall
+into meditation, remind me of this promise. To-night I desire to leave
+my work, my researches, and return to family joys, to the delights of
+the heart--Pepita, I need them, I thirst for them!"
+
+"You will tell me what it is you seek, Balthazar?"
+
+"Poor child, you cannot understand it."
+
+"You think so? Ah! my friend, listen; for nearly four months I have
+studied chemistry that I might talk of it with you. I have read
+Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Chaptal, Nollet, Rouelle, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
+Spallanzani, Leuwenhoek, Galvani, Volta,--in fact, all the books about
+the science you worship. You can tell me your secrets, I shall
+understand you."
+
+"Oh! you are indeed an angel," cried Balthazar, falling at her feet,
+and shedding tears of tender feeling that made her quiver. "Yes, we
+will understand each other in all things."
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "I would throw myself into those hellish fires which
+heat your furnaces to hear these words from your lips and to see you
+thus." Then, hearing her daughter's step in the anteroom, she sprang
+quickly forward. "What is it, Marguerite?" she said to her eldest
+daughter.
+
+"My dear mother, Monsieur Pierquin has just come. If he stays to
+dinner we need some table-linen; you forgot to give it out this
+morning."
+
+Madame Claes drew from her pocket a bunch of small keys and gave them
+to the young girl, pointing to the mahogany closets which lined the
+ante-chamber as she said:
+
+"My daughter, take a set of the Graindorge linen; it is on your
+right."
+
+"Since my dear Balthazar comes back to me, let the return be
+complete," she said, re-entering her chamber with a soft and arch
+expression on her face. "My friend, go into your own room; do me the
+kindness to dress for dinner, Pierquin will be with us. Come, take off
+this ragged clothing; see those stains! Is it muratic or sulphuric
+acid which left these yellow edges to the holes? Make yourself young
+again,--I will send you Mulquinier as soon as I have changed my
+dress."
+
+Balthazar attempted to pass through the door of communication,
+forgetting that it was locked on his side. He went out through the
+anteroom.
+
+"Marguerite, put the linen on a chair, and come and help me dress; I
+don't want Martha," said Madame Claes, calling her daughter.
+
+Balthazar had caught Marguerite and turned her towards him with a
+joyous action, exclaiming: "Good-evening, my child; how pretty you are
+in your muslin gown and that pink sash!" Then he kissed her forehead
+and pressed her hand.
+
+"Mamma, papa has kissed me!" cried Marguerite, running into her
+mother's room. "He seems so joyous, so happy!"
+
+"My child, your father is a great man; for three years he has toiled
+for the fame and fortune of his family: he thinks he has attained the
+object of his search. This day is a festival for us all."
+
+"My dear mamma," replied Marguerite, "we shall not be alone in our
+joy, for the servants have been so grieved to see him unlike himself.
+Oh! put on another sash, this is faded."
+
+"So be it; but make haste, I want to speak to Pierquin. Where is he?"
+
+"In the parlor, playing with Jean."
+
+"Where are Gabriel and Felicie?"
+
+"I hear them in the garden."
+
+"Run down quickly and see that they do not pick the tulips; your
+father has not seen them in flower this year, and he may take a fancy
+to look at them after dinner. Tell Mulquinier to go up and assist your
+father in dressing."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+As Marguerite left the room, Madame Claes glanced at the children
+through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and
+saw that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings
+spotted with gold, commonly called "darning-needles."
+
+"Be good, my darlings," she said, raising the lower sash of the window
+and leaving it up to air the room. Then she knocked gently on the door
+of communication, to assure herself that Balthazar had not fallen into
+abstraction. He opened it, and seeing him half-dressed, she said in
+joyous tones:--
+
+"You won't leave me long with Pierquin, will you? Come as soon as you
+can."
+
+Her step was so light as she descended that a listener would never
+have supposed her lame.
+
+"When monsieur carried madame upstairs," said the old valet, whom she
+met on the staircase, "he tore this bit out of her dress, and he broke
+the jaw of that griffin; I'm sure I don't know who can put it on
+again. There's our staircase ruined--and it used to be so handsome!"
+
+"Never mind, my poor Mulquinier; don't have it mended at all--it is
+not a misfortune," said his mistress.
+
+"What can have happened?" thought Lemulquinier; "why isn't it a
+misfortune, I should like to know? has the master found the Absolute?"
+
+"Good-evening, Monsieur Pierquin," said Madame Claes, opening the
+parlor door.
+
+The notary rushed forward to give her his arm; as she never took any
+but that of her husband she thanked him with a smile and said,--
+
+"Have you come for the thirty thousand francs?"
+
+"Yes, madame; when I reached home I found a letter of advice from
+Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have drawn six letters of
+exchange upon Monsieur Claes for five thousand francs each."
+
+"Well, say nothing to Balthazar to-day," she replied. "Stay and dine
+with us. If he happens to ask why you came, find some plausible
+pretext, I entreat you. Give me the letter. I will speak to him myself
+about it. All is well," she added, noticing the lawyer's surprise. "In
+a few months my husband will probably pay off all the sums he has
+borrowed."
+
+Hearing these words, which were said in a low voice, the notary looked
+at Mademoiselle Claes, who was entering the room from the garden
+followed by Gabriel and Felicie, and remarked,--
+
+"I have never seen Mademoiselle Marguerite as pretty as she is at this
+moment."
+
+Madame Claes, who was sitting in her armchair with little Jean upon
+her lap, raised her head and looked at her daughter, and then at the
+notary, with a pretended air of indifference.
+
+Pierquin was a man of middle height, neither stout nor thin, with
+vulgar good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than
+melancholy, and a pensive habit in which there was more of indecision
+than thought. People called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager
+after his own interests, and too extortionate towards others to have
+set up a genuine divorce from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his
+affected silence, his habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the
+void, seemed to indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely
+concealed the shallow insignificance of a notary busied exclusively
+with earthly interests; though he was still young enough to feel envy.
+To marry into the family of Claes would have been to him an object of
+extreme desire, if an instinct of avarice had not underlain it. He
+could seem generous, but for all that he was a keen reckoner. And
+thus, without explaining to himself the motive for his change of
+manner, his behavior was harsh, peremptory, and surly, like that of an
+ordinary business man, when he thought the Claes were ruined;
+accommodating, affectionate, and almost servile, when he saw reason to
+believe in a happy issue to his cousin's labors. Sometimes he beheld
+an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might
+aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned
+to make her his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without
+malevolence, not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a
+naive selfishness which rendered all his better qualities incomplete,
+while certain absurdities of manner spoiled his personal appearance.
+
+Madame Claes recollected the curt tone in which the notary had spoken
+to her that afternoon in the porch of the church, and she took note of
+the change which her present reply had wrought in his demeanor; she
+guessed its meaning and tried to read her daughter's mind by a
+penetrating glance, seeking to discover if she thought of her cousin;
+but the young girl's manner showed complete indifference.
+
+After a few moments spent in general conversation on the current
+topics of the day, the master of the house came down from his bedroom,
+where his wife had heard with inexpressible delight the creaking sound
+of his boots as he trod the floor. The step was that of a young and
+active man, and foretold so complete a transformation, that the mere
+expectation of his appearance made Madame Claes quiver as he descended
+the stairs. Balthazar entered, dressed in the fashion of the period.
+He wore highly polished top-boots, which allowed the upper part of the
+white silk stockings to appear, blue kerseymere small-clothes with
+gold buttons, a flowered white waistcoat, and a blue frock-coat. He
+had trimmed his beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails,
+and washed his hands, all with such care that he was scarcely
+recognizable to those who had seen him lately. Instead of an old man
+almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the notary saw a
+Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous and
+affable presence was full of its former attractions. The weariness and
+suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to
+the bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.
+
+"Good-evening, Pierquin," said Monsieur Claes.
+
+Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his
+wife's lap and tossed him in the air.
+
+"See that little fellow!" he exclaimed to the notary. "Doesn't such a
+pretty creature make you long to marry? Take my word for it, my dear
+Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything. Up, up!" he
+cried, tossing Jean into the air; "down, down! up! down!"
+
+The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the
+ceiling and down to the carpet. The mother turned away her eyes that
+she might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her,--
+simple apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.
+
+"Let me see how you can walk," said Balthazar, putting his son on the
+floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.
+
+The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold
+buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his
+boots.
+
+"You are a darling!" cried Balthazar, kissing him; "you are a Claes,
+you walk straight. Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?" he said to
+his eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it. "Are you
+struggling valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you
+taken sharp hold of mathematics?"
+
+Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy
+that characterized him.
+
+"My dear Pierquin," he said, "perhaps you have something to say to
+me." He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, "Come and see
+my tulips."
+
+Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to
+repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable,
+so truly himself. She rose, took her daughter round the waist and
+kissed her, exclaiming:--
+
+"My dear Marguerite, my darling child! I love you better than ever to-
+day."
+
+"It is long since I have seen my father so kind," answered the young
+girl.
+
+Lemulquinier announced dinner. To prevent Pierquin from offering her
+his arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into
+the next room, the whole family following.
+
+The dining-room, whose ceiling was supported by beams and decorated
+with paintings cleaned and restored every year, was furnished with
+tall oaken side-boards and buffets, on whose shelves stood many a
+curious piece of family china. The walls were hung with violet
+leather, on which designs of game and other hunting objects were
+stamped in gold. Carefully arranged here and there above the shelves,
+shone the brilliant plumage of strange birds, and the lustre of rare
+shells. The chairs, which evidently had not been changed since the
+beginning of the sixteenth century, showed the square shape with
+twisted columns and the low back covered with a fringed stuff, common
+to that period, and glorified by Raphael in his picture of the Madonna
+della Sedia. The wood of these chairs was now black, but the gilt
+nails shone as if new, and the stuff, carefully renewed from time to
+time, was of an admirable shade of red.
+
+The whole life of Flanders with its Spanish innovations was in this
+room. The decanters and flasks on the dinner-table, with their
+graceful antique lines and swelling curves, had an air of
+respectability. The glasses were those old goblets with stems and feet
+which may be seen in the pictures of the Dutch or Flemish school. The
+dinner-service of faience, decorated with raised colored figures, in
+the manner of Bernard Palissy, came from the English manufactory of
+Wedgwood. The silver-ware was massive, with square sides and designs
+in high relief,--genuine family plate, whose pieces, in every variety
+of form, fashion, and chasing, showed the beginnings of prosperity and
+the progress towards fortune of the Claes family. The napkins were
+fringed, a fashion altogether Spanish; and as for the linen, it will
+readily be supposed that the Claes's household made it a point of
+honor to possess the best.
+
+All this service of the table, silver, linen, and glass, were for the
+daily use of the family. The front house, where the social
+entertainments were given, had its own especial luxury, whose marvels,
+being reserved for great occasions, wore an air of dignity often lost
+to things which are, as it were, made common by daily use. Here, in
+the home quarter, everything bore the impress of patriarchal use and
+simplicity. And--for a final and delightful detail--a vine grew
+outside the house between the windows, whose tendrilled branches
+twined about the casements.
+
+"You are faithful to the old traditions, madame," said Pierquin, as he
+received a plate of that celebrated thyme soup in which the Dutch and
+Flemish cooks put little force-meat balls and dice of fried bread.
+"This is the Sunday soup of our forefathers. Your house and that of my
+uncle des Racquets are the only ones where we still find this historic
+soup of the Netherlands. Ah! pardon me, old Monsieur Savaron de
+Savarus of Tournai makes it a matter of pride to keep up the custom;
+but everywhere else old Flanders is disappearing. Now-a-days
+everything is changing; furniture is made from Greek models; wherever
+you go you see helmets, lances, shields, and bows and arrows!
+Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old furniture, melting
+up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres porcelain,--which
+does not compare with either old Dresden or with Chinese ware. Oh! as
+for me, I'm Flemish to the core; my heart actually bleeds to see the
+coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture for the mere
+value of the wood and the metal. The fact is, society wants to change
+its skin. Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods of art.
+When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously done.
+During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the
+Louvre. On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,--no depth,
+no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on
+their canvas. And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient
+school of art! Ah, bah!--"
+
+"Our old masters," replied Balthazar, "studied the combination of
+colors and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and
+rain. You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are
+less cultivated in these days than formerly."
+
+Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation. The notary's
+remark that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her
+the brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which
+she had inherited from her brother,--hoping to be able thus to pay off
+the thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.
+
+"Ha! ha!" Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes's mind
+returned to the conversation, "so they are discussing my work in
+Douai, are they?"
+
+"Yes," replied the notary, "every one is asking what it is you spend
+so much money on. Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring
+that a man like you should be searching for the Philosopher's stone. I
+ventured to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a
+scheme was attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take
+God's work out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a
+business man to spend your money for such befooling quackeries. Still,
+I admit that I share the regret people feel at your absence from
+society. You might as well not live here at all. Really, madame, you
+would have been delighted had you heard the praises showered on
+Monsieur Claes and on you."
+
+"You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least
+evil is to make me ridiculous," said Balthazar. "Ha! so they think me
+ruined? Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete
+in honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the
+respect my dear townsmen bestow on wealth."
+
+Madame Claes colored deeply. For two years the anniversary had been
+forgotten. Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted
+brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his
+tenderness than at this moment. He was full of attention to his
+children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and
+pertinence. This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was
+certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks
+and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for
+heart which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.
+
+Old Lemulquinier seemed to renew his youth; he came and went about the
+table with unusual liveliness, caused by the accomplishment of his
+secret hopes. The sudden change in his master's ways was even more
+significant to him than to Madame Claes. Where the family saw
+happiness he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments
+he had come to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the
+drift of his master's researches from certain exclamations which
+escaped the chemist when expected results disappointed him, or whether
+the innate tendency of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the
+ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that
+Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a superstitious feeling that
+was a mixture of terror, admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory
+was to him what a lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope.
+Every night he went to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float
+in gold"; and every morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of
+the night before.
+
+His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
+lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
+trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their
+moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family
+which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of
+linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt
+was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed
+from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
+misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition
+of a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders
+and its linen-trade was epitomized in this old man, often called, by
+way of euphony, Mulquinier. He was not without originality, either of
+character or appearance. His face was triangular in shape, broad and
+long, and seamed by small-pox which had left innumerable white and
+shining patches that gave him a fantastic appearance. He was tall and
+thin; his whole demeanor solemn and mysterious; and his small eyes,
+yellow as the wig which was smoothly plastered on his head, cast none
+but oblique glances.
+
+The old valet's outward man was in keeping with the feeling of
+curiosity which he everywhere inspired. His position as assistant to
+his master, the depositary of a secret jealously guarded and about
+which he maintained a rigid silence, invested him with a species of
+charm. The denizens of the rue de Paris watched him pass with an
+interest mingled with awe; to all their questions he returned
+sibylline answers big with mysterious treasures. Proud of being
+necessary to his master, he assumed an annoying authority over his
+companions, employing it to further his own interests and compel a
+submission which made him virtually the ruler of the house. Contrary
+to the custom of Flemish servants, who are deeply attached to the
+families whom they serve, Mulquinier cared only for Balthazar. If any
+trouble befell Madame Claes, or any joyful event happened to the
+family, he ate his bread and butter and drank his beer as
+phlegmatically as ever.
+
+Dinner over, Madame Claes proposed that coffee should be served in the
+garden, by the bed of tulips which adorned the centre of it. The
+earthenware pots in which the bulbs were grown (the name of each
+flower being engraved on slate labels) were sunk in the ground and so
+arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain
+dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower,
+named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved
+edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's
+father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this
+treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed
+that he kept the plant always in the parlor and often spent whole days
+in contemplating it. The stem was enormous, erect, firm, and admirably
+green; the proportions of the plant were in harmony with the
+proportions of the flower, whose seven colors were distinguishable
+from each other with the clearly defined brilliancy which formerly
+gave such fabulous value to these dazzling plants.
+
+"Here you have at least thirty or forty thousand francs' worth of
+tulips," said the notary, looking alternately at Madame Claes and at
+the many-colored pyramid. The former was too enthusiastic over the
+beauty of the flowers, which the setting sun was just then
+transforming into jewels, to observe the meaning of the notary's
+words.
+
+"What good do they do you?" continued Pierquin, addressing Balthazar;
+"you ought to sell them."
+
+"Bah! am I in want of money?" replied Claes, in the tone of a man to
+whom forty thousand francs was a matter of no consequence.
+
+There was a moment's silence, during which the children made many
+exclamations.
+
+"See this one, mamma!"
+
+"Oh! here's a beauty!"
+
+"Tell me the name of that one!"
+
+"What a gulf for human reason to sound!" cried Balthazar, raising his
+hands and clasping them with a gesture of despair. "A compound of
+hydrogen and oxygen gives off, according to their relative
+proportions, under the same conditions and by the same principle,
+these manifold colors, each of which constitutes a distinct result."
+
+His wife heard the words of his proposition, but it was uttered so
+rapidly that she did not seize its exact meaning; and Balthazar, as if
+remembering that she had studied his favorite science, made her a
+mysterious sign, saying,--
+
+"You do not yet understand me, but you will."
+
+Then he apparently fell back into the absorbed meditation now habitual
+to him.
+
+"No, I am sure you do not understand him," said Pierquin, taking his
+coffee from Marguerite's hand. "The Ethiopian can't change his skin,
+nor the leopard his spots," he whispered to Madame Claes. "Have the
+goodness to remonstrate with him later; the devil himself couldn't
+draw him out of his cogitation now; he is in it for to-day, at any
+rate."
+
+So saying, he bade good-bye to Claes, who pretended not to hear him,
+kissed little Jean in his mother's arms, and retired with a low bow.
+
+When the street-door clanged behind him, Balthazar caught his wife
+round the waist, and put an end to the uneasiness his feigned reverie
+was causing her by whispering in her ear,--
+
+"I knew how to get rid of him."
+
+Madame Claes turned her face to her husband, not ashamed to let him
+see the tears of happiness that filled her eyes: then she rested her
+forehead against his shoulder and let little Jean slide to the floor.
+
+"Let us go back into the parlor," she said, after a pause.
+
+Balthazar was exuberantly gay throughout the evening. He invented
+games for the children, and played with such zest himself that he did
+not notice two or three short absences made by his wife. About half-
+past nine, when Jean had gone to bed, Marguerite returned to the
+parlor after helping her sister Felicie to undress, and found her
+mother seated in the deep armchair, and her father holding his wife's
+hand as he talked to her. The young girl feared to disturb them, and
+was about to retire without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight
+of her, and said:--
+
+"Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down,
+kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into
+your own room; but do not sit up too late."
+
+"Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away. Husband and
+wife remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the
+last glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden,
+whose outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering
+darkness. When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in
+a voice of emotion,--
+
+"Let us go upstairs."
+
+Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's
+chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable.
+The good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of
+virtue. It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic
+superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender
+feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and
+sacred in social life. Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have
+wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had
+done so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the
+aspect of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others. To a
+pretty creature it would have been mere luxury, to her it was a
+necessity. No one better understood the meaning of the saying, "A
+pretty woman is self-created,"--a maxim which guided every action of
+Napoleon's first wife, and often made her false; whereas Madame Claes
+was ever natural and true.
+
+Though Balthazar knew his wife's chamber well, his forgetfulness of
+material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of
+soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first
+time. The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid
+colors of the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases
+judiciously placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of
+lights whose effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial
+music. The gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the
+coverings of pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches
+of gold, soberly distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by
+the varied colors of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious
+stones. The secret of this choice arrangement--it was he, ever he!
+Josephine could not tell him in words more eloquent that he was now
+and ever the mainspring of her joys and woes.
+
+The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out
+sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness. The
+silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume
+that penetrated the system without fatiguing it. The curtains,
+carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention
+of guarding the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the
+reconquered husband. Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin,
+which was trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came
+about her throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was
+exquisitely glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a
+raven's wing, went to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the
+door and allowed no sound to penetrate the chamber from without.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was
+sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a
+sensitive woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering
+it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman's greatest
+charm lies in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the
+admission of a weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the
+nobler sentiments. Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical
+seduction? When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled
+sound along the wooden rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as
+though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a
+chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to
+help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-
+tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out in
+relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his
+arms and carry her to her sofa. This was what she wanted.
+
+"You promised me," she said, taking his hand which she held between
+her own magnetic palms, "to tell me the secret of your researches.
+Admit, dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the
+courage to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be
+able to understand you. I am curious; hide nothing from me. Tell me
+first how it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and
+oppressed, when over night I had left you happy."
+
+"Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so
+coquettishly delightful?"
+
+"Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the
+greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which
+gives birth to the highest happiness of earth? Your love comes back to
+me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to
+keep it from me so long. Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of
+all the women in the world. Love is vast, but it is not infinite,
+while Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go
+alone. I hate all that comes between us. If you win the glory for
+which you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I--I
+alone--should be the giver of your happiness."
+
+"No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that
+first led me into this glorious path."
+
+"A man!" she cried in terror.
+
+"Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in
+1809?"
+
+"Do I remember him!" she exclaimed; "I am often annoyed because my
+memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from
+coals of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull
+stripped of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!--
+What awful impassiveness in his bearing! Ah! surely if there had been
+a room in any inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here."
+
+"That Polish gentleman," resumed Balthazar, "was named Adam de
+Wierzchownia. When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we
+happened by chance to speak of chemistry. Compelled by poverty to give
+up the study of that science, he had become a soldier. It was, I
+think, by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each
+other as adepts. When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in
+pieces, the captain gave a start of surprise. 'Have you studied
+chemistry?' he asked. 'With Lavoisier,' I answered. 'You are happy in
+being rich and free,' he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came
+the sigh of a man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish
+hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated,
+not to be expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that
+startled me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last
+gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation
+for his country's fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had
+always felt an irresistible vocation. 'And I see you recognize as I
+do,' he added, 'that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder,
+each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the
+same qualitative result.'
+
+"He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye,
+he said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose
+general meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a
+force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture,
+which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer
+strikes the anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used,
+which were to me like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah's
+tongue; for my studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their
+full bearing.
+
+"'Monsieur,' he said, 'the parity of these three substances, in
+appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
+nature ought to have a single principle. The researches of modern
+chemistry prove the truth of this law in the larger part of natural
+effects. Chemistry divides creation into two distinct parts,--organic
+nature, and inorganic nature. Organic nature, comprising as it does
+all animal and vegetable creations which show an organization more or
+less perfect,--or, to be more exact, a greater or lesser motive power,
+which gives more or less sensibility,--is, undoubtedly, the more
+important part of our earth. Now, analysis has reduced all the
+products of this nature to four simple substances, namely: three
+gases, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, and another simple substance,
+non-metallic and solid, carbon. Inorganic nature, on the contrary, so
+simple, devoid of movement and sensation, denied the power of growth
+(too hastily accorded to it by Linnaeus), possesses fifty-three simple
+substances, or elements, whose different combinations make its
+products. Is it probable that means should be more numerous where a
+lesser number of results are produced?
+
+"'My master's opinion was that these fifty-three primary bodies have
+one originating principle, acted upon in the past by some force the
+knowledge of which has perished to-day, but which human genius ought
+to rediscover. Well, then, suppose that this force does live and act
+again; we have chemical unity. Organic and inorganic nature would
+apparently then rest on four essential principles,--in fact, if we
+could decompose nitrogen which we ought to consider a negation, we
+should have but three. This brings us at once close upon the great
+Ternary of the ancients and of the alchemists of the Middle Ages, whom
+we do wrong to scorn. Modern chemistry is nothing more than that. It
+is much, and yet little,--much, because the science has never recoiled
+before difficulty; little, in comparison with what remains to be done.
+Chance has served her well, my noble Science! Is not that tear of
+crystallized pure carbon, the diamond, seemingly the last substance
+possible to create? The old alchemists, who thought that gold was
+decomposable and therefore creatable, shrank from the idea of
+producing the diamond. Yet we have discovered the nature and the law
+of its composition.
+
+"'As for me,' he continued, 'I have gone farther still. An experiment
+proved to me that the mysterious Ternary, which has occupied the human
+mind from time immemorial, will not be found by physical analyses,
+which lack direction to a fixed point. I will relate, in the first
+place, the experiment itself.
+
+"'Sow cress-seed (to take one among the many substances of organic
+nature) in flour of brimstone (to take another simple substance).
+Sprinkle the seed with distilled water, that no unknown element may
+reach the product of the germination. The seed germinates, and sprouts
+from a known environment, and feeds only on elements known by
+analysis. Cut off the stalks from time to time, till you get a
+sufficient quantity to produce after burning them enough ashes for the
+experiment. Well, by analyzing those ashes, you will obtain silicic
+acid, aluminium, phosphate and carbonate of lime, carbonate of
+magnesia, the sulphate and carbonate of potassium, and oxide of iron,
+precisely as if the cress had grown in ordinary earth, beside a brook.
+Now, those elements did not exist in the brimstone, a simple substance
+which served for soil to the cress, nor in the distilled water with
+which the plant was nourished, whose composition was known. But since
+they are no more to be found in the seed itself, we can explain their
+presence in the plant only by assuming the existence of a primary
+element common to all the substances contained in the cress, and also
+to all those by which we environed it. Thus the air, the distilled
+water, the brimstone, and the various elements which analysis finds in
+the cress, namely, potash, lime, magnesia, aluminium, etc., should
+have one common principle floating in the atmosphere like light of the
+sun.
+
+"'From this unimpeachable experiment,' he cried, 'I deduce the
+existence of the Alkahest, the Absolute,--a substance common to all
+created things, differentiated by one primary force. Such is the net
+meaning and position of the problem of the Absolute, which appears to
+me to be solvable. In it we find the mysterious Ternary, before whose
+shrine humanity has knelt from the dawn of ages,--the primary matter,
+the medium, the product. We find that terrible number THREE in all
+things human. It governs religions, sciences, and laws.
+
+"'It was at this point,' he went on, 'that poverty put an end to my
+researches. You were the pupil of Lavoisier, you are rich, and master
+of your own time, I will therefore tell you my conjectures. Listen to
+the conclusions my personal experiments have led me to foresee. The
+PRIME MATTER must be the common principle in the three gases and in
+carbon. The MEDIUM must be the principle common to negative and
+positive electricity. Proceed to the discovery of the proofs that will
+establish those two truths; you will then find the explanation of all
+phenomenal existence.
+
+"'Oh, monsieur!' he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that I
+carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the
+Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the
+ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command
+without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted
+dream. My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and
+cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of a power I obey and
+yet despise. My soul has no consciousness of these acts; it is fixed,
+immovable, plunged in one idea, rapt in that idea, the Search for the
+Alkahest,--for that principle by which seeds that are absolutely
+alike, growing in the same environments, produce, some a white, others
+a yellow flower. The same phenomenon is seen in silkworms fed from the
+same leaves, and apparently constituted exactly alike,--one produces
+yellow silk, another white; and if we come to man himself, we find
+that children often resemble neither father nor mother. The logical
+deduction from this fact surely involves the explanation of all the
+phenomena of nature.
+
+"'Ah, what can be more in harmony with our ideas of God than to
+believe that he created all things by the simplest method? The
+Pythagorean worship of ONE, from which come all other numbers, and
+which represented Primal Matter; that of the number TWO, the first
+aggregation and the type of all the rest; that of the number THREE,
+which throughout all time has symbolized God,--that is to say, Matter,
+Force, and Product,--are they not an echo, lingering along the ages,
+of some confused knowledge of the Absolute? Stahl, Becker, Paracelsus,
+Agrippa, all the great Searchers into occult causes took the Great
+Triad for their watchword,--in other words, the Ternary. Ignorant men
+who despise alchemy, that transcendent chemistry, are not aware that
+our work is only carrying onward the passionate researches of those
+great men. Had I found the Absolute, the Unconditioned, I meant to
+have grappled with Motion. Ah! while I am swallowing gunpowder and
+leading men uselessly to their death, my former master is piling
+discovery upon discovery! he is soaring towards the Absolute, while I
+--I shall die like a dog in the trenches!'
+
+"When this poor grand man recovered his composure, he said, in a
+touching tone of brotherhood, 'If I see cause for a great experiment I
+will bequeath it to you before I die.'--My Pepita," cried Balthazar,
+taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
+cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
+timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--"
+
+"Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
+husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
+deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the
+happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of
+the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that
+flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the
+devil could have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither
+husband, nor father, nor master of your family."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
+piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising
+above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine
+purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the
+treasures of your heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know
+what I have done. In these three years I have made giant strides--"
+
+His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
+fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
+she wept as she listened to him.
+
+"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
+substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
+Why!" he continued, noticing that his wife wept, "I have even
+decomposed tears. Tears contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride
+of sodium, mucin, and water."
+
+He went on speaking, without observing the spasm of pain that
+contracted Josephine's features; he was again astride of Science,
+which bore him with outspread wings far away from material existence.
+
+"This analysis, my dear," he went on, "is one of the most convincing
+proofs of the theory of the Absolute. All life involves combustion.
+According to the greater or the lesser activity of the fire on its
+hearth is life more or less enduring. In like manner, the destruction
+of mineral bodies is indefinitely retarded, because in their case
+combustion is nominal, latent, or imperceptible. In like manner,
+again, vegetables, which are constantly revived by combinations
+producing dampness, live indefinitely; in fact, we still possess
+certain vegetables which existed before the period of the last
+cataclysm. But each time that nature has perfected an organism and
+then, for some unknown reason, has introduced into it sensation,
+instinct, or intelligence (three marked stages of the organic system),
+these three agencies necessitate a combustion whose activity is in
+direct proportion to the result obtained. Man, who represents the
+highest point of intelligence, and who offers us the only organism by
+which we arrive at a power that is semi-creative--namely, THOUGHT--is,
+among all zoological creations, the one in which combustion is found
+in its most intense degree; whose powerful effects may in fact be seen
+to some extent in the phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates which a
+man's body reveals to our analysis. May not these substances be traces
+left within him of the passage of the electric fluid which is the
+principle of all fertilization? Would not electricity manifest itself
+by a greater variety of compounds in him than in any other animal?
+Should not he have faculties above those of all other created beings
+for the purpose of absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute
+principle? and may he not assimilate that principle so as to produce,
+in some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so.
+Man is a retort. In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too
+little phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a
+madman too much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while
+that of a man of genius is saturated to its due degree. The man
+constantly in love, the street-porter, the dancer, the large eater,
+are the ones who disperse the force resulting from their electrical
+apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--"
+
+"Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
+love--"
+
+"An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
+Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!"
+
+As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
+face rose by degrees to inspiration. "I shall make metals," he cried;
+"I shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!"
+
+"Will you be the happier?" she asked in despair. "Accursed science!
+accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride,
+the sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God."
+
+"Oh! oh! God!"
+
+"He denies Him!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes, God wields a
+power that you can never gain."
+
+At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
+looked at his wife and trembled.
+
+"What power?" he asked.
+
+"Primal force--motion," she replied. "This is what I learn from the
+books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
+Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances
+come, like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign
+to them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have
+them, can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the
+Malaga wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun,
+of the atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating."
+
+"If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create."
+
+"Will nothing stop him?" cried Pepita. "Oh! my love, my love! it is
+killed! I have lost him!"
+
+She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the
+sanctity of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater
+beauty than ever through her tears.
+
+"Yes," she resumed in a broken voice, "you are dead to all. I see it
+but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
+it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
+companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I
+would fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed
+created you to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he
+has put within your breast the irresistible power that has mastered
+you-- But no; God is good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts
+of the woman who adores you, of the children you are bound to protect.
+It is the Evil One alone who is helping you to walk amid these
+fathomless abysses, these clouds of outer darkness, where the light of
+faith does not guide you,--nothing guides you but a terrible belief in
+your own faculties! Were it otherwise, would you not have seen that
+you have wasted nine hundred thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me
+justice, you, my God on earth! I reproach you not; were we alone I
+would bring you, on my knees, all I possess and say, 'Take it, fling
+it into your furnace, turn it into smoke'; and I should laugh to see
+it float away in vapor. Were you poor, I would beg without shame for
+the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could my body yield your hateful
+Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those fires with joy, since your
+glory, your delight is in that unfound secret. But our children,
+Claes, our children! what will become of them if you do not soon
+discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin came to-day? He
+came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and cannot pay. I told
+him that you had the money, so that I might spare you the
+mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
+silver."
+
+She saw her husband's eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
+despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.
+
+"My friend," she cried, "refrain awhile from these researches; let us
+economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
+hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
+condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore
+you, do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love
+them, Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath
+them a wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them.
+Motherhood has sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I
+have sometimes wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to
+your soul, your life! And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the
+cause of my children before you, and not my own?"
+
+Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot
+forth her feelings as though they had been arrows. She triumphed over
+her rival. Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at
+her feet.
+
+"Have I caused you such grief?" he said, in the tone of a man waking
+from a painful dream.
+
+"My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of
+yourself," she said, passing her hand over his hair. "Sit here beside
+me," she continued, pointing to the sofa. "Ah! I can forget it all
+now, now that you come back to us; all can be repaired--but you will
+not abandon me again? say that you will not! My noble husband, grant
+me a woman's influence on your heart, that influence which is so
+needful to the happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds
+of great men. You may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but
+let me check you a little for your good. I will never abuse the power
+if you will grant it. Be famous, but be happy too. Do not love
+Chemistry better than you love us. Hear me, we will be generous; we
+will let Science share your heart; but oh! my Claes, be just; let us
+have our half. Tell me, is not my disinterestedness sublime?"
+
+She made him smile. With the marvellous art such women possess, she
+carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where
+women reign. But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently
+contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was
+habitual to it. And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the
+rebirth of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power
+she thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:--
+
+"Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you may
+wish us to be mere electrical machines, yet your gases and your
+ethereal disengaged matters will never explain the gift we possess of
+looking into futurity."
+
+"Yes," he exclaimed, "by affinity. The power of vision which makes the
+poet, the power of deduction which makes the man of science, are based
+on invisible affinities, intangible, imponderable, which vulgar minds
+class as moral phenomena, whereas they are physical effects. The
+prophet sees and deduces. Unfortunately, such affinities are too rare
+and too obscure to be subjected to analysis or observation."
+
+"Is this," she said, giving him a kiss to drive away the Chemistry she
+had so unfortunately reawakened, "what you call an affinity?"
+
+"No; it is a compound; two substances that are equivalents are
+neutral, they produce no reaction--"
+
+"Oh! hush, hush," she cried, "you will make me die of grief. I can
+never bear to see my rival in the transports of your love."
+
+"But, my dear life, I think only of you. My work is for the glory of
+my family. You are the basis of all my hopes."
+
+"Ah, look me in the eyes!"
+
+The scene had made her as beautiful as a young woman; of her whole
+person Balthazar saw only her head, rising from a cloud of lace and
+muslin.
+
+"Yes, I have done wrong to abandon you for Science," he said. "If I
+fall back into thought and preoccupation, then, my Pepita, you must
+drag me from them; I desire it."
+
+She lowered her eyes and let him take her hand, her greatest beauty,--
+a hand that was both strong and delicate.
+
+"But I ask more," she said.
+
+"You are so lovely, so delightful, you can obtain all," he answered.
+
+"I wish to destroy that laboratory, and chain up Science," she said,
+with fire in her eyes.
+
+"So be it--let Chemistry go to the devil!"
+
+"This moment effaces all!" she cried. "Make me suffer now, if you
+will."
+
+Tears came to Balthazar's eyes, as he heard these words.
+
+"You were right, love," he said. "I have seen you through a veil; I
+have not understood you."
+
+"If it concerned only me," she said, "willingly would I have suffered
+in silence, never would I have raised my voice against my sovereign.
+But your sons must be thought of, Claes. If you continue to dissipate
+your property, no matter how glorious the object you have in view the
+world will take little account of it, it will only blame you and
+yours. But surely, it is enough for a man of your noble nature that
+his wife has shown him a danger he did not perceive. We will talk of
+this no more," she cried, with a smile and a glance of coquetry. "To-
+night, my Claes, let us not be less than happy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
+Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
+to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did
+not enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
+move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months,
+only returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes
+determined to give, as in former years, to commemorate his wedding-
+day. He now began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder which his
+experiments and his indifference had brought into his business
+affairs.
+
+Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
+continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
+servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
+Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named
+Martha, who had never left her mistress since the latter left her
+convent. It was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole
+society of Douai with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all
+difficulties by proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the
+gardener's son as a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin's manservant. Thus
+the pinched circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the
+community.
+
+During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
+cleverly able to outwit her husband's listlessness. She commissioned
+him to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand
+staircase, the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque
+to order one of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the
+burgher tables in the northern departments. A fete like that the Claes
+were about to give is a serious affair, involving thought and care and
+active correspondence, in a land where traditions of hospitality put
+the family honor so much at stake that to servants as well as masters
+a grand dinner is like a victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived
+from Ostend, grouse were imported from Scotland, fruits came from
+Paris; in short, not the smallest accessory was lacking to the
+hereditary luxury.
+
+A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
+government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary
+fete of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion
+to the neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to
+make it a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the
+fete was talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the
+toilettes, the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited,
+and the events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These
+preparations now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of
+the Alkahest. Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the
+servant of science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming,
+as the master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought
+of surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special
+character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among
+all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
+fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
+and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
+
+The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
+luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the Twenty-
+ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the grand
+army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made known on
+the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound grief was
+felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved by a
+natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
+
+Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for
+Balthazar from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he
+wrote, from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He
+remembered his promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host
+several ideas on the subject of the Absolute, which had come to him
+since the period of their meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a
+reverie which apparently did honor to his patriotism; but his wife was
+not misled by it. To her, this festal day brought a double mourning:
+and the ball, during which the House of Claes shone with departing
+lustre, was sombre and sad in spite of its magnificence, and the many
+choice treasures gathered by the hands of six generations, which the
+people of Douai now beheld for the last time.
+
+Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
+occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes
+by the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and
+especially by the harmony of her form and countenance with the
+characteristics of her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish
+girl whom the painters of that country loved to represent,--the head
+perfectly rounded and full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and
+laid smoothly on the brow, gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome
+arms, natural stoutness which did not detract from her beauty, a timid
+air, and yet, on the high square brow an expression of firmness,
+hidden at present under an apparent calmness and docility. Without
+being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little natural enjoyment.
+Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief expressions of
+Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that seemed cold at
+first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain grace of
+outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic
+happiness. By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet
+explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was
+the living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of
+Bruges, whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the
+resemblance.
+
+The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters
+forbade the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not
+exclude the pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however,
+retired early; only the more indifferent remained, together with a few
+card players and the intimate friends of the family. Little by little
+the brilliantly lighted house, to which all the notabilities of Douai
+had flocked, sank into silence, and by one o'clock in the morning the
+great gallery was deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon
+after another, and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant,
+grew dark and gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before
+the family. When the Claes returned to their own appartement,
+Balthazar gave his wife the letter he had received from the Polish
+officer: Josephine returned it with a mournful gesture; she foresaw
+the coming doom.
+
+From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the
+weariness and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after
+the family breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little
+Jean, and talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or
+embroidery or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the
+talk, and seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his
+wife came down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in
+an easy-chair looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite
+undisturbed by the rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was
+brought in, he read it slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to
+kill the time. Then he would get up, look at the sky through the
+window panes, go back to his chair and mend the fire drearily, as
+though he were deprived of all consciousness of his own movements by
+the tyranny of ideas.
+
+Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
+was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
+length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons
+who have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for
+subjects of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of
+material existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of
+expansion which need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of
+material life cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide
+promptly; and the mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving
+natures. Consequently, two isolated beings who know each other
+thoroughly ought to seek their enjoyments in the higher regions of
+thought; for it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the
+immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has
+accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable,
+unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless
+simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such
+charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human
+phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and
+comprehend all.
+
+During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
+critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
+suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
+been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
+ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education
+of his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such
+resources were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when
+Josephine's relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon
+to Louis XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps
+of power or the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the
+sham embassies from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After
+wasting the revenues of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or
+successful, was reduced to the expedients of a family heir to raise
+the money he needed; in the midst of his grandeur he felt his
+impotence, and the royal nurse who had rocked the cradles of his
+children was often at her wit's end to rock his, or soothe the monarch
+now suffering from his misuse of men and things, of life and God.
+Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the
+clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of
+treasures for the human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as
+artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the
+pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two sovereigns;
+though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, the
+other by his weakness.
+
+What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
+nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
+she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week.
+Cafes at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which,
+during a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and
+liqueurs which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the
+Flemish dainties and took their "cafe noir" or their "cafe au lait
+frappe," while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's
+toilettes, and related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture
+by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet
+plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet,
+Balthazar's efforts to play the part of host, his constrained
+courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a state of
+languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
+
+These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
+it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice,
+they retarded Claes's fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though
+he never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least
+regret for the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he
+grew to have the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression
+of a sick person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the
+very manner with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic
+pyramids in the fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he
+was doing. When night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt
+released him from the importunities of thought: the next day he rose
+wearily to encounter another day,--seeming to measure time as the
+tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to cross.
+
+If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to
+see the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings
+of the mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the
+heart. She dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to
+the laughter of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air
+of a man absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw
+him shake off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem
+cheerful, that he might not distress others. The little coquetries of
+the father with his daughters, or his games with little Jean,
+moistened the eyes of the poor wife, who often left the room to hide
+the feelings that heroic effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of
+which is well understood by women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks
+their heart. At such times Madame Claes longed to say, "Kill me, and
+do what you will!"
+
+Little by little Balthazar's eyes lost their fire and took the
+glaucous opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His
+attentions to his wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing,
+grew heavy and inert. These symptoms became more marked towards the
+end of April, terrifying Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now
+intolerable, and who had all along reproached herself a thousand times
+while she admired the Flemish loyalty which kept her husband faithful
+to his promise.
+
+At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
+hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring
+him back to life.
+
+"Dear friend," she said, "I release you from your promise."
+
+Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
+
+"You are thinking of your researches, are you not?" she continued.
+
+He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from
+remonstrating, Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss
+into which they were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed
+it, smiling.
+
+"Thank you," she said; "now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
+than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
+sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
+me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
+jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
+and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
+diamonds."
+
+The joy that suddenly lighted her husband's face was like a death-
+knell to the wife: she saw, with anguish, that the man's passion was
+stronger than himself. Claes had faith in his work which enabled him
+to walk without faltering on a path which, to his wife, was the edge
+of a precipice. For him faith, for her doubt,--for her the heavier
+burden: does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she
+chose to believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her
+connivance in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
+
+"The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
+Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
+the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
+and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
+whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on
+the contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily,
+delighted to give vent to the joy that choked him.
+
+From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
+The future of her children, their father's credit, were two motives as
+powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
+were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
+unhappy woman never knew another hour's peace of mind. The demon of
+Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
+agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
+and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair,
+paralyzed by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food,
+like those of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory,
+tormented her spirit and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes,
+blaming herself for compliance with a passion whose object was futile
+and condemned by the Church, she would rise, go to the window on the
+courtyard and gaze with terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If
+the smoke were rising, an expression of despair came into her face, a
+conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in her heart and mind. She
+beheld her children's future fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not
+saving their father's life? was it not her first duty to make him
+happy? This last thought calmed her for a moment.
+
+She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
+even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
+were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
+seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
+through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
+building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
+her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
+breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar's
+experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming
+success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she
+looked at him and trembled,--Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.
+Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
+the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the
+other.
+
+Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought,
+the poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and
+despair which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the
+anxieties of the mother trembling for her children. She now practised
+the doleful silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing
+the gloom that pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that
+melancholy parlor without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad
+maternal foresight, she trained her daughters to household work, and
+tried to make them skilful in womanly employments, that they might
+have the means of living if destitution came. The outward calm of this
+quiet home covered terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer
+Balthazar had used the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty
+thousand francs in debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
+
+In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
+begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
+unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without
+result as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when
+he ended the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his
+impotence crushed him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted
+enormous sums of money drove him to despair. It was a frightful
+catastrophe. He left the garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and
+threw himself into a chair in the midst of his children, remaining
+motionless for some minutes as though dead, making no answer to the
+questions his wife pressed upon him. Tears came at last to his relief,
+and he rushed to his own chamber that no one might witness his
+despair.
+
+Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone
+with her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man,
+these broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the
+husband and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past
+sufferings. The victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said
+to her in a tone of dreadful conviction: "I am a wretch; I have
+gambled away the lives of my children, and your life; you can have no
+happiness unless I kill myself,"--the words struck home to her heart;
+she knew her husband's nature enough to fear he might at once act out
+the despairing wish: an inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources
+of life itself, seized her, and was all the more dangerous because she
+controlled its violent effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
+
+"My friend," she said, "I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose
+friendship does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction
+at our ruin, but an old man who has been as good to me as a father.
+The Abbe de Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save
+ourselves from ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those
+in the gallery is enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your
+property, and also all that you owe to Messieurs Protez and
+Chiffreville, who have no doubt an account against you."
+
+Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which
+was now white.
+
+"Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
+they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus, to
+display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families: he
+thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
+recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
+amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
+continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with
+very little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in
+course of time and by economy; meantime you will be happy."
+
+Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
+mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the
+protector of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one
+with his Pepita's, now held her in his arms without perceiving the
+horrible convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair
+and her lips with a nervous shudder.
+
+"I dared not tell you," he said, "that between me and the
+Unconditioned, the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To
+gasify metals, I only need to find the means of submitting them to
+intense heat in some centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is
+nil,--in short, in a vacuum."
+
+Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected
+a passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem
+in chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to
+the parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened
+daughters, and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her
+hands, kneeling one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her
+grief, and asking at intervals, "Mother, what is it?"
+
+"My poor children, I am dying; I feel it."
+
+The answer struck home to Marguerite's heart; she saw, for the first
+time on her mother's face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which
+only comes on olive-tinted skins.
+
+"Martha, Martha!" cried Felicie, "come quickly; mamma wants you."
+
+The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the
+livid hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in
+Spanish,--
+
+"Body of Christ! madame is dying!"
+
+Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
+footbath, and returned to the parlor.
+
+"Don't alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha," said her
+mistress. "My poor dear girls," she added, pressing Marguerite and
+Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; "I wish I could live
+long enough to see you married and happy. Martha," she continued,
+"tell Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name
+to come here."
+
+The shock of this attack extended to the kitchen. Josette and Martha,
+both devoted to Madame Claes and her daughters, felt the blow in their
+own affections. Martha's dreadful announcement,--"Madame is dying;
+monsieur must have killed her; get ready a mustard-bath,"--forced
+certain exclamations from Josette, which she launched at Lemulquinier.
+He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
+one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
+boudoir of a fine lady.
+
+"I knew how it would end," said Josette, glancing at the valet and
+mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
+"There's no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
+himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat."
+
+Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
+which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
+Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
+made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a
+motion worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large
+mouth with bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
+
+"Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,"
+he said; "and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold.
+There's not the thickness of a farthing between us and--"
+
+"Well, you've got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don't you give
+'em to monsieur? he's your master, and if you are so sure of his
+doings--"
+
+"You don't know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
+and heat the water," remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
+
+"I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
+silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
+and if you are allowed to have your way, you'll make ducks and drakes
+of everything till there's nothing left."
+
+"And monsieur," added Martha, entering the kitchen, "will kill madame,
+just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won't let him swallow
+up everything he's got. He's possessed by the devil; anybody can see
+that. You don't risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
+haven't got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when we
+are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
+Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l'Abbe de Solis."
+
+"I've got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the
+laboratory in order," said the valet. "Besides, it's too far--go
+yourself."
+
+"Just hear the brute!" cried Martha. "Pray who is to give madame her
+foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
+head."
+
+"Mulquinier," said Marguerite, coming into the servants' hall, which
+adjoined the kitchen, "on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call
+at Dr. Pierquin's house and ask him to come here at once."
+
+"Ha! you've got to go now," said Josette.
+
+"Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order," said
+Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
+despotic air.
+
+"Father," said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
+descending the stairs, "can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
+town?"
+
+"Now you're forced to go, you old barbarian!" cried Martha, as she
+heard Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter's bidding.
+
+The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the
+family whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two
+women and Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of
+increasing the loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
+
+This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the
+future of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor
+in misfortune.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Balthazar was again so absorbed that he did not notice Josephine's
+condition. He took Jean upon his knee and trotted him mechanically,
+pondering, no doubt, the problem he now had the means of solving. He
+saw them bring the footbath to his wife, who was still in the parlor,
+too weak to rise from the low chair in which she was lying; he gazed
+abstractedly at his daughters now attending on their mother, without
+inquiring the cause of their tender solicitude. When Marguerite or
+Jean attempted to speak aloud, Madame Claes hushed them and pointed to
+Balthazar. Such a scene was of a nature to make a young girl think;
+and Marguerite, placed as she was between her father and mother, was
+old enough and sensible enough to weigh their conduct.
+
+There comes a moment in the private life of every family when the
+children, voluntarily or involuntarily, judge their parents. Madame
+Claes foresaw the dangers of that moment. Her love for Balthazar
+impelled her to justify in Marguerite's eyes conduct that might, to
+the upright mind of a girl of sixteen, seem faulty in a father. The
+very respect which she showed at this moment for her husband, making
+herself and her condition of no account that nothing might disturb his
+meditation, impressed her children with a sort of awe of the paternal
+majesty. Such self-devotion, however infectious it might be, only
+increased Marguerite's admiration for her mother, to whom she was more
+particularly bound by the close intimacy of their daily lives. This
+feeling was based on the intuitive perception of sufferings whose
+causes naturally occupied the young girl's mind. No human power could
+have hindered some chance word dropped by Martha, or by Josette, from
+enlightening her as to the real reasons for the condition of her home
+during the last four years. Notwithstanding Madame Claes's reserve,
+Marguerite discovered slowly, thread by thread, the clue to the
+domestic drama. She was soon to be her mother's active confidante, and
+later, under other circumstances, a formidable judge.
+
+Madame Claes's watchful care now centred upon her eldest daughter, to
+whom she endeavored to communicate her own self-devotion towards
+Balthazar. The firmness and sound judgment which she recognized in the
+young girl made her tremble at the thought of a possible struggle
+between father and daughter whenever her own death should make the
+latter mistress of the household. The poor woman had reached a point
+where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death
+itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the
+resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from
+encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future
+disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She
+hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she
+studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite,
+trusting that his daughter might continue to be to him an angel of
+love, while exercising over the family a protecting and conservative
+authority. Might she not thus shed the light of her love upon her dear
+ones from beyond the grave? Nevertheless, she was not willing to lower
+the father in the eyes of his daughter by initiating her into the
+secret dangers of his scientific passion before it became necessary to
+do so. She studied Marguerite's soul and character, seeking to
+discover if the girl's own nature would lead her to be a mother to her
+brothers and her sister, and a tender, gentle helpmeet to her father.
+
+Madame Claes's last days were thus embittered by fears and mental
+disquietudes which she dared not confide to others. Conscious that the
+recent scene had struck her death-blow, she turned her thoughts wholly
+to the future. Balthazar, meanwhile, now permanently unfitted for the
+care of property or the interests of domestic life, thought only of
+the Absolute.
+
+The heavy silence that reigned in the parlor was broken only by the
+monotonous beating of Balthazar's foot, which he continued to trot,
+wholly unaware that Jean had slid from his knee. Marguerite, who was
+sitting beside her mother and watching the changes on that pallid,
+convulsed face, turned now and again to her father, wondering at his
+indifference. Presently the street-door clanged, and the family saw
+the Abbe de Solis leaning on the arm of his nephew and slowly crossing
+the court-yard.
+
+"Ah! there is Monsieur Emmanuel," said Felicie.
+
+"That good young man!" exclaimed Madame Claes; "I am glad to welcome
+him."
+
+Marguerite blushed at the praise that escaped her mother's lips. For
+the last two days a remembrance of the young man had stirred
+mysterious feelings in her heart, and wakened in her mind thoughts
+that had lain dormant. During the visit made by the Abbe de Solis to
+Madame Claes on the occasion of his examining the pictures, there
+happened certain of those imperceptible events which wield so great an
+influence upon life; and their results were sufficiently important to
+necessitate a brief sketch of the two personages now first introduced
+into the history of this family.
+
+It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
+of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in
+the family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there,
+as elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration
+at the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.
+
+The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a
+withered face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the
+eyes. He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in
+a painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag,
+and obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at
+hand. His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a
+delicate, suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit
+of religious purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his
+vast learning, his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and
+things, had been successively a Dominican friar, the "grand
+penitencier" of Toledo, and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of
+Malines. If the French Revolution had not intervened, the influence of
+the Casa-Real family would have made him one of the highest
+dignitaries of the Church; but the grief he felt for the death of the
+young duke, Madame Claes's brother, who had been his pupil, turned him
+from active life, and he now devoted himself to the education of his
+nephew, who was made an orphan at an early age.
+
+After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to
+be near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm
+for Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind,
+led him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders,
+where Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and
+Illuminati made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of
+Catholics devoted to those ideas, he remained there,--all the more
+willingly because he was looked up to as a patriarch by this
+particular communion, which continued to follow the doctrines of the
+Mystics notwithstanding the censures of the Church upon Fenelon and
+Madame Guyon. His morals were rigid, his life exemplary, and he was
+believed to have visions. In spite of his own detachment from the
+things of life, his affection for his nephew made him careful of the
+young man's interests. When a work of charity was to be done, the old
+abbe put the faithful of his flock under contribution before having
+recourse to his own means; and his patriarchal authority was so well
+established, his motives so pure, his discernment so rarely at fault,
+that every one was ready to answer his appeal. To give an idea of the
+contrast between the uncle and the nephew, we may compare the old man
+to a willow on the borders of a stream, hollowed to a skeleton and
+barely alive, and the young man to a sweet-brier clustering with
+roses, whose erect and graceful stems spring up about the hoary trunk
+of the old tree as if they would support it.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, rigidly brought up by his uncle, who kept him at
+his side as a mother keeps her daughter, was full of delicate
+sensibility, of half-dreamy innocence,--those fleeting flowers of
+youth which bloom perennially in souls that are nourished on religious
+principles. The old priest had checked all sensuous emotions in his
+pupil, preparing him for the trials of life by constant study and a
+discipline that was almost cloisteral. Such an education, which would
+launch the youth unstained upon the world and render him happy,
+provided he were fortunate in his earliest affections, had endowed him
+with a purity of spirit which gave to his person something of the
+charm that surrounds a maiden. His modest eyes, veiling a strong and
+courageous soul, sent forth a light that vibrated in the soul as the
+tones of a crystal bell sound their undulations on the ear. His face,
+though regular, was expressive, and charmed the eye with its clear-cut
+outline, the harmony of its lines, and the perfect repose which came
+of a heart at peace. All was harmonious. His black hair, his brown
+eyes and eyebrows, heightened the effect of a white skin and a
+brilliant color. His voice was such as might have been expected from
+his beautiful face; and something feminine in his movements accorded
+well with the melody of its tones and with the tender brightness of
+his eyes. He seemed unaware of the charm he exercised by his modest
+silence, the half-melancholy reserve of his manner, and the respectful
+attentions he paid to his uncle.
+
+Those who saw the young man as he watched the uncertain steps of the
+old abbe, and altered his own to suit their devious course, looking
+for obstructions that might trip his uncle's feet and guiding him to a
+smoother way, could not fail to recognize in Emmanuel de Solis the
+generous nature which makes the human being a divine creation. There
+was something noble in the love that never criticised his uncle, in
+the obedience that never cavilled at the old man's orders; it seemed
+as though there were prophecy in the gracious name his godmother had
+given him. When the abbe gave proof of his Dominican despotism, in
+their own home or in the presence of others, Emmanuel would sometimes
+lift his head with so much dignity, as if to assert his metal should
+any other man assail him, that men of honor were moved at the sight
+like artists before a glorious picture; for noble sentiments ring as
+loudly in the soul from living incarnations as from the imagery of
+art.
+
+Emmanuel had accompanied his uncle when the latter came to examine the
+pictures of the House of Claes. Hearing from Martha that the Abbe de
+Solis was in the gallery, Marguerite, anxious to see so celebrated a
+man, invented an excuse to join her mother and gratify her curiosity.
+Entering hastily, with the heedless gaiety young girls assume at times
+to hide their wishes, she encountered near the old abbe, clothed in
+black and looking decrepit and cadaverous, the fresh, delightful face
+of a young man. The naive glances of the youthful pair expressed their
+mutual astonishment. Marguerite and Emmanuel had no doubt seen each
+other in their dreams. Both lowered their eyes and raised them again
+with one impulse; each, by the action, made the same avowal.
+Marguerite took her mother's arm, and spoke to her to cover her
+confusion and find shelter under the maternal wing, turning her neck
+with a swan-like motion to keep sight of Emmanuel, who still supported
+his uncle on his arm. The light was cleverly arranged to give due
+value to the pictures, and the half-obscurity of the gallery
+encouraged those furtive glances which are the joy of timid natures.
+Neither went so far, even in thought, as the first note of love; yet
+both felt the mysterious trouble which stirs the heart, and is
+jealously kept secret in our youth from fastidiousness or modesty.
+
+The first impression which forces a sensibility hitherto suppressed to
+overflow its borders, is followed in all young people by the same
+half-stupefied amazement which the first sounds of music produce upon
+a child. Some children laugh and think; others do not laugh till they
+have thought; but those whose hearts are called to live by poetry or
+love, listen stilly and hear the melody with a look where pleasure
+flames already, and the search for the infinite begins. If, from an
+irresistible feeling, we love the places where our childhood first
+perceived the beauties of harmony, if we remember with delight the
+musician, and even the instrument, that taught them to us, how much
+more shall we love the being who reveals to us the music of life? The
+first heart in which we draw the breath of love,--is it not our home,
+our native land? Marguerite and Emmanuel were, each to each, that
+Voice of music which wakes a sense, that hand which lifts the misty
+veil, and reveals the distant shores bathed in the fires of noonday.
+
+When Madame Claes paused before a picture by Guido representing an
+angel, Marguerite bent forward to see the impression it made upon
+Emmanuel, and Emmanuel looked at Marguerite to compare the mute
+thought on the canvas with the living thought beside him. This
+involuntary and delightful homage was understood and treasured. The
+old abbe gravely praised the picture, and Madame Claes answered him,
+but the youth and the maiden were silent.
+
+Such was their first meeting: the mysterious light of the picture
+gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders,
+all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this
+vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in
+Marguerite's mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a
+luminous ray when Emmanuel murmured a few farewell words to Madame
+Claes. That voice, whose fresh and mellow tone sent nameless delights
+into her heart, completed the revelation that had come to her,--a
+revelation which Emmanuel, were he able, should cherish to his own
+profit; for it often happens that the man whom destiny employs to
+waken love in the heart of a young girl is ignorant of his work and
+leaves it unfinished. Marguerite bowed confusedly; her true farewell
+was in the glance which seemed unwilling to lose so pure and lovely a
+vision. Like a child she wanted her melody. Their parting took place
+at the foot of the old staircase near the parlor; and when Marguerite
+re-entered the room she watched the uncle and the nephew till the
+street-door closed upon them.
+
+Madame Claes had been so occupied with the serious matters which
+caused her conference with the abbe that she did not on this occasion
+observe her daughter's manner. When Monsieur de Solis came again to
+the house on the occasion of her illness, she was too violently
+agitated to notice the color that rushed into Marguerite's face and
+betrayed the tumult of a virgin heart conscious of its first joy. By
+the time the old abbe was announced, Marguerite had taken up her
+sewing and appeared to give it such attention that she bowed to the
+uncle and nephew without looking at them. Monsieur Claes mechanically
+returned their salutation and left the room with the air of a man
+called away by his occupations. The good Dominican sat down beside
+Madame Claes and looked at her with one of those searching glances by
+which he penetrated the minds of others; the sight of Monsieur Claes
+and his wife was enough to make him aware of a catastrophe.
+
+"My children," said the mother, "go into the garden; Marguerite, show
+Emmanuel your father's tulips."
+
+Marguerite, half abashed, took Felicie's arm and looked at the young
+man, who blushed and caught up little Jean to cover his confusion.
+When all four were in the garden, Felicie and Jean ran to the other
+side, leaving Marguerite, who, conscious that she was alone with young
+de Solis, led him to the pyramid of tulips, arranged precisely in the
+same manner year after year by Lemulquinier.
+
+"Do you love tulips?" asked Marguerite, after standing for a moment in
+deep silence,--a silence Emmanuel seemed little disposed to break.
+
+"Mademoiselle, these flowers are beautiful, but to love them we must
+perhaps have a taste of them, and know how to understand their
+beauties. They dazzle me. Constant study in the gloomy little chamber
+in which I live, close to my uncle, makes me prefer those flowers that
+are softer to the eye."
+
+Saying these words he glanced at Marguerite; but the look, full as it
+was of confused desires, contained no allusion to the lily whiteness,
+the sweet serenity, the tender coloring which made her face a flower.
+
+"Do you work very hard?" she asked, leading him to a wooden seat with
+a back, painted green. "Here," she continued, "the tulips are not so
+close; they will not tire your eyes. Yes, you are right, those colors
+are dazzling; they give pain."
+
+"Do I work hard?" replied the young man after a short silence, as he
+smoothed the gravel with his foot. "Yes; I work at many things. My
+uncle wished to make me a priest."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Marguerite, naively.
+
+"I resisted; I felt no vocation for it. But it required great courage
+to oppose my uncle's wishes. He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite
+recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me,
+a poor orphan!"
+
+"What do you mean to be?" asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking
+herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty
+gesture, "I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender
+admiration, "except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question. I am
+studying to be a teacher. I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich. If I
+were principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to
+live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could
+love. That is the life I look forward to. Perhaps that is why I prefer
+a daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold
+and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy
+is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor
+teacher like me."
+
+"I have always called the daisies marguerites," she said.
+
+Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his
+feet. Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which
+he feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he
+said at last, "I dared not pronounce your name"--then he paused.
+
+"A teacher?" she said.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall
+undertake great works which will make me nobly useful. I have a strong
+taste for historical researches."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+That "ah!" so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave
+a foolish laugh and said:--
+
+"You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you."
+
+"My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, I
+think," said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.
+
+"Your mother seems to me greatly changed," said Emmanuel.
+
+"She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings;
+and we can only try to share them with her."
+
+Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which
+involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.
+Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown
+to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of
+the price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to
+sell in Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the
+day when poverty should overtake her children. With much deliberation,
+and after weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the
+act as one of prudence. He took his leave to prepare at once for the
+sale, which he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur
+Claes in the estimation of others.
+
+The next day Monsieur de Solis despatched his nephew, armed with
+letters of introduction, to Amsterdam, where Emmanuel, delighted to do
+a service to the Claes family, succeeded in selling all the pictures
+in the gallery to the noted bankers Happe and Duncker for the
+ostensible sum of eighty-five thousand Dutch ducats and fifteen
+thousand more which were paid over secretly to Madame Claes. The
+pictures were so well known that nothing was needed to complete the
+sale but an answer from Balthazar to the letter which Messieurs Happe
+and Duncker addressed to him. Emmanuel de Solis was commissioned by
+Claes to receive the price of the pictures, which were thereupon
+packed and sent away secretly, to conceal the sale from the people of
+Douai.
+
+Towards the end of September, Balthazar paid off all the sums that he
+had borrowed, released his property from encumbrance, and resumed his
+chemical researches; but the House of Claes was deprived of its
+noblest ornament. Blinded by his passion, the master showed no regret;
+he felt so sure of repairing the loss that in selling the pictures he
+reserved the right of redemption. In Josephine's eyes a hundred
+pictures were as nothing compared to domestic happiness and the
+satisfaction of her husband's mind; moreover, she refilled the gallery
+with other paintings taken from the reception-rooms, and to conceal
+the gaps which these left in the front house, she changed the
+arrangement of the furniture.
+
+When Balthazar's debts were all paid he had about two hundred thousand
+francs with which to carry on his experiments. The Abbe de Solis and
+his nephew took charge secretly of the fifteen thousand ducats
+reserved by Madame Claes. To increase that sum, the abbe sold the
+Dutch ducats, to which the events of the Continental war had given a
+commercial value. One hundred and sixty-five thousand francs were
+buried in the cellar of the house in which the abbe and his nephew
+resided.
+
+Madame Claes had the melancholy happiness of seeing her husband
+incessantly busy and satisfied for nearly eight months. But the shock
+he had lately given her was too severe; she sank into a state of
+languor and debility which steadily increased. Balthazar was now so
+completely absorbed in science that neither the reverses which had
+overtaken France, nor the first fall of Napoleon, nor the return of
+the Bourbons, drew him from his laboratory; he was neither husband,
+father, nor citizen,--solely chemist.
+
+Towards the close of 1814 Madame Claes declined so rapidly that she
+was no longer able to leave her bed. Unwilling to vegetate in her own
+chamber, the scene of so much happiness, where the memory of vanished
+joys forced involuntary comparisons with the present and depressed
+her, she moved into the parlor. The doctors encouraged this wish by
+declaring the room more airy, more cheerful, and therefore better
+suited to her condition. The bed in which the unfortunate woman ended
+her life was placed between the fireplace and a window looking on the
+garden. There she passed her last days, sacredly occupied in training
+the souls of her young daughters, striving to leave within them the
+fire of her own. Conjugal love, deprived of its manifestations,
+allowed maternal love to have its way. The mother now seemed the more
+delightful because her motherhood had blossomed late. Like all
+generous persons, she passed through sensitive phases of feeling that
+she mistook for remorse. Believing that she had defrauded her children
+of the tenderness that should have been theirs, she sought to redeem
+those imaginary wrongs; bestowing attentions and tender cares which
+made her precious to them; she longed to make her children live, as it
+were, within her heart; to shelter them beneath her feeble wings; to
+cherish them enough in the few remaining days to redeem the time
+during which she had neglected them. The sufferings of her mind gave
+to her words and her caresses a glowing warmth that issued from her
+soul. Her eyes caressed her children, her voice with its yearning
+intonations touched their hearts, her hand showered blessings on their
+heads.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no
+longer received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more
+fetes on the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes's state of
+health seemed a sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of
+her husband's debts put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the
+political vicissitudes to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the
+Hundred-days, and the occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist
+and his researches completely out of people's minds. During those two
+years Douai was so often on the point of being taken, it was so
+constantly occupied either by the French or by the enemy, so many
+foreigners came there, so many of the country-people sought refuge
+within its walls, so many lives were in peril, so many catastrophes
+occurred, that each man thought only of himself.
+
+The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
+lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
+the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
+rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
+hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the
+strength to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words,
+invariably the same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence
+settled down upon the room. The monotony of this existence was broken
+only on the days when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the
+evening with Madame Claes.
+
+While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked
+with Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their
+innocent joy, not allowing them to see how painful and yet how
+soothing to her wounded spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin
+love, murmuring in fitful words from heart to heart. The inflection of
+their voices, to them so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a
+glance of mutual understanding surprised between the two threw her,
+half-dead as she was, back to the young and happy past which gave such
+bitterness to the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive
+delicacy of feeling repressed the sweet half-childish play of love,
+lest it should hurt the saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively
+divined.
+
+No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own,
+a nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them,
+and in which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of
+their growth, and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their
+development. There are passions ardently conceived which remain
+ardent, like that of Madame Claes for her husband: there are
+sentiments on which all life has smiled; these retain their spring-
+time gaiety, their harvest-time of joy, seasons that never fail of
+laughter or of fetes; but there are other loves, framed in melancholy,
+circled by distress, whose pleasures are painful, costly, burdened by
+fears, poisoned by remorse, or blackened by despair. The love in the
+heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel, as yet unknown to them for love, the
+sentiment that budded into life beneath the gloomy arches of the
+picture-gallery, beside the stern old abbe, in a still and silent
+moment, that love so grave and so discreet, yet rich in tender depths,
+in secret delights that were luscious to the taste as stolen grapes
+snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in coming years the
+sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its birth.
+
+Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
+they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
+deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
+shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
+becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium of
+communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
+supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
+hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
+distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother's
+sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of
+unuttered promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of
+Raphael painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither
+avowed; they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not
+know what wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their
+heads. They doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow
+them, they stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not
+daring to say to each other, "Shall we end our days together?"
+
+The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
+concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
+caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
+comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
+through Balthazar. However painful her husband's presence might be to
+her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
+he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
+moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying
+woman would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and
+her daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they
+forgave him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some
+sudden illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
+only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
+Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
+their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of
+the being he had once so passionately loved.
+
+When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner,
+Madame Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up
+her strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face
+blushed brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health.
+Balthazar came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color
+on her cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, "My dear
+wife, how are you to-day?" she answered, "Better, dear friend," and
+made him think she would be up and recovered on the morrow. His
+preoccupation was so great that he accepted this reply, and believed
+the illness of which his wife was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to
+the eyes of the world, in his alone she was living.
+
+A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
+year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning,
+and shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife
+only in presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who
+came to visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These
+two beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at
+rare intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate
+unreserve which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a
+time when even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now
+a boon to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of
+separation, which might have killed her had she been truly living. Her
+bodily pain became so great that there were times when she was joyful
+in the thought that he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay
+watching Balthazar in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his
+own way, she lived in the happiness she had procured for him,--a
+shadowy joy, and yet it satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if
+she were loved, she forced herself to believe it; and she glided over
+that icy surface, not daring to rest her weight upon it lest it should
+break and drown her soul in a gulf of awful nothingness.
+
+No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was
+slowly consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in
+this condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first
+weeks of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the
+close of February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who,
+in the words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
+
+"Madame," said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
+hear the conversation, "Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
+hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
+protect the future of your children."
+
+Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling;
+then she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of
+her head which affected him.
+
+His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had
+yielded herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was
+like the wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and
+a mere pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and
+so courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
+Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
+remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
+and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
+
+Marguerite's management of the household since her mother's illness
+had amply fulfilled the dying woman's hopes that Madame Claes was able
+to look upon the future of the family without absolute despair,
+confident that she herself would live again in this strong and loving
+angel. Both women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must
+now be made between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the
+mother at the daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times,
+as Madame Claes rested from her writing, Marguerite said: "Mother?"
+then she dropped as if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last
+thoughts, did not ask the meaning of the interrogation. At last,
+Madame Claes wished to seal the letter; Marguerite held the taper,
+turning aside her head that she might not see the superscription.
+
+"You can read it, my child," said the mother, in a heart-rending
+voice.
+
+The young girl read the words, "To my daughter Marguerite."
+
+"We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile," said Madame
+Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
+
+Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for
+several hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were
+kneeling by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had
+been brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six
+months was professor of history and philosophy.
+
+"Dear children, we must part!" she cried. "You have never forsaken me,
+never! and he who--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Monsieur Emmanuel," said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her
+mother's face, "go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse."
+
+Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
+Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of
+the urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, "I will come."
+
+"Emmanuel," said Madame Claes when he returned to her, "take my sons
+away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
+sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand."
+
+When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite,
+who understood her and sent Felicie away.
+
+"I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma," said Marguerite
+who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased the
+wound Pierquin had given. "I have had no money for the household
+expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months' wages to the
+servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
+dare to do so. You don't know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
+gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?"
+
+"He never told me!" exclaimed Madame Claes. "My God! thou callest me
+to thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?"
+
+She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to
+her eyes.
+
+"Marguerite," she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, "here
+is a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my
+death, when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you
+are without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father,
+but take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a
+few hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be
+economical. Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your
+father,--and it may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in
+searching for a secret whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to
+his family, and he will no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it
+of you,--should that time come, treat him with the tenderness of a
+daughter, strive to reconcile the interests of which you will be the
+sole protector with the duty which you owe to a father, to a great man
+who sacrificed his happiness and his life to the glory of his family;
+he can only do wrong in act, his intentions are noble, his heart is
+full of love; you will see him once more kind and affectionate--YOU!
+Marguerite, it is my duty to say these words to you on the borders of
+the grave. If you wish to soften the anguish of my death, promise me,
+my child, to take my place beside your father; to cause him no grief;
+never to reproach him; never to condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate
+guardian of the home until--his work accomplished--he is again the
+master of his family."
+
+"I understand you, dear mother," said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
+eyelids of the dying woman. "I will do as you wish."
+
+"Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
+management of the property and the household. If you married, your
+husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
+family and disturb your father's life."
+
+Marguerite looked at her mother and said, "Have you nothing else to
+say to me about my marriage?"
+
+"Can you hesitate, my child?" cried the dying woman in alarm.
+
+"No," the daughter answered; "I promise to obey you."
+
+"Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you," said the mother,
+shedding hot tears. "Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
+Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
+guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
+sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
+him--too much."
+
+She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
+gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
+violent.
+
+A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
+and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
+ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
+looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
+
+"Where is my husband?"
+
+Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
+uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha,
+in spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the
+staircase and through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of
+the laboratory.
+
+"Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer
+the last sacraments," she cried with the violence of indignation.
+
+"I am coming," answered Balthazar.
+
+Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was
+following him. Madame Claes's eyes never left the parlor door, but her
+husband did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he
+entered, Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?" she said to him with an
+angelic tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
+
+"I have done it!" he cried joyfully; "Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
+substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently
+the principle of--"
+
+A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his
+senses.
+
+"What did they tell me?" he demanded. "Are you worse? What is the
+matter?"
+
+"This is the matter, monsieur," whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
+at his conduct; "your wife is dying, and you have killed her."
+
+Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
+went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-
+yard. Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and
+a few tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+"You are dying, and I have killed you!" he said. "What does he mean?"
+
+"My husband," she answered, "I only lived in your love, and you have
+taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did."
+
+"Leave us," said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
+"Have I for one moment ceased to love you?" he went on, sitting down
+beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
+
+"My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I
+have not been able to bear the contrast between our early married
+life, so full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when
+you are not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the
+body, has its functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to
+the family, to all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of
+our early married days; such joys must cease in the after-time of
+life, but they ripen into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence
+unlimited, the tender habits of affection: you have torn those
+treasures from me! I go in time: we live together no longer; you hide
+your thoughts and actions from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I
+ever given you one word, one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet,
+you have sold your last pictures, you have sold even the wine in your
+cellar, you are borrowing money on your property, and have said no
+word to me. Ah! I go from life weary of life. If you are doing wrong,
+if you delude yourself in following the unattainable, have I not shown
+you that my love could share your faults, could walk beside you and be
+happy, though you led me in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,
+--that was my glory; it is now my death. Balthazar, my illness has
+lasted long; it began on the day when here, in this place where I am
+about to die, you showed me that Science was more to you than Family.
+And now the end has come; your wife is dying, and your fortune lost.
+Fortune and wife were yours,--you could do what you willed with your
+own; but on the day of my death my property goes to my children, and
+you cannot touch it; what will then become of you? I am telling you
+the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far; when I am gone will
+anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now your life? If you
+have sacrificed your wife, your children will count but little in the
+scale; for I must be just and own you loved me above all. Two millions
+and six years of toil you have cast into the gulf,--and what have you
+found?"
+
+At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid
+his face.
+
+"Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children," continued the
+dying woman. "You are called in derision 'Claes the alchemist'; soon
+it will be 'Claes the madman.' For myself, I believe in you. I know
+you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius
+is mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be
+unhappy with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be
+ruined. I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me
+consolation for my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less
+bitter to me, let me be certain that my children will not want for
+bread-- Ah, nothing, nothing, not even you, can calm my fears."
+
+"I swear," said Claes, "to--"
+
+"No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath," she said,
+interrupting him. "You owed us your protection; we have been without
+it seven years. Science is your life. A great man should have neither
+wife nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice. His
+virtues are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe,
+he cannot belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the
+earth about him, like a majestic tree--and I, poor plant, I could not
+rise to the height of your life, I die at its feet. I have waited for
+this last day to tell you these dreadful thoughts: they came to me in
+the lightnings of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let
+these words echo in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath.
+The wife is dead, dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of
+her feelings, of her joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have
+lived so long? But those poor children did not forsake me! they have
+grown beside my anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare
+my children!"
+
+"Lemulquinier!" cried Claes in a voice of thunder.
+
+The old man appeared.
+
+"Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be
+careful, but destroy all. I renounce Science," he said to his wife.
+
+"Too late," she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. "Marguerite!" she
+cried, feeling herself about to die.
+
+Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
+saw her mother's eyes now glazing.
+
+"MARGUERITE!" repeated the dying woman.
+
+The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
+invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a
+dying bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die;
+the vital forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her
+husband.
+
+Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
+foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
+virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
+Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the
+daughter judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in
+his daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love
+with which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and
+gave to her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must
+ever hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his
+attendant genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion,
+denying him the strength to carry his repentance into action: he
+feared himself.
+
+When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
+minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now
+departed. The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor,
+where the noble woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had
+the courage to enter it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals:
+every hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words;
+it paves the way for evil actions with a jest; it degrades nobility of
+soul by ridicule; it jeers at sons who mourn their fathers,
+anathematizes those who do not mourn them enough, and finds diversion
+(the hypocrite!) in weighing the dead bodies before they are cold.
+
+The evening of the day on which Madame Claes died, her friends cast a
+few flowers upon her memory in the intervals of their games of whist,
+doing homage to her noble qualities as they sorted their hearts and
+spades. Then, after a few lachrymal phrases,--the fi, fo, fum of
+collective grief, uttered in precisely the same tone, and with neither
+more nor less of feeling, at all hours and in every town in France,--
+they proceeded to estimate the value of her property. Pierquin was the
+first to observe that the death of this excellent woman was a mercy,
+for her husband had made her unhappy; and it was even more fortunate
+for her children: she was unable while living to refuse her money to
+the husband she adored; but now that she was dead, Claes was debarred
+from touching it. Thereupon all present calculated the fortune of that
+poor Madame Claes, wondered how much she had laid by (had she, in
+fact, laid by anything?), made an inventory of her jewels, rummaged in
+her wardrobe, peeped into her drawers, while the afflicted family were
+still weeping and praying around her death-bed.
+
+Pierquin, with an appraising eye, stated that Madame Claes's
+possessions in her own right--to use the notarial phrase--might still
+be recovered, and ought to amount to nearly a million and a half of
+francs; basing this estimate partly on the forest of Waignies,--whose
+timber, counting the full-grown trees, the saplings, the primeval
+growths, and the recent plantations, had immensely increased in value
+during the last twelve years,--and partly on Balthazar's own property,
+of which enough remained to "cover" the claims of his children, if the
+liquidation of their mother's fortune did not yield sufficient to
+release him. Mademoiselle Claes was still, in Pierquin's slang, "a
+four-hundred-thousand-franc girl." "But," he added, "if she doesn't
+marry,--a step which would of course separate her interests and permit
+us to sell the forest and auction, and so realize the property of the
+minor children and reinvest it where the father can't lay hands on it,
+--Claes is likely to ruin them all."
+
+Thereupon, everybody looked about for some eligible young man worthy
+to win the hand of Mademoiselle Claes; but none of them paid the
+lawyer the compliment of suggesting that he might be the man.
+Pierquin, however, found so many good reasons to reject the suggested
+matches as unworthy of Marguerite's position, that the confabulators
+glanced at each other and smiled, and took malicious pleasure in
+prolonging this truly provincial method of annoyance. Pierquin had
+already decided that Madame Claes's death would have a favorable
+effect upon his suit, and he began mentally to cut up the body in his
+own interests.
+
+"That good woman," he said to himself as he went home to bed, "was as
+proud as a peacock; she would never gave given me her daughter. Hey,
+hey! why couldn't I manage matters now so as to marry the girl? Pere
+Claes is drunk on carbon, and takes no care of his children. If, after
+convincing Marguerite that she must marry to save the property of her
+brothers and sister, I were to ask him for his daughter, he will be
+glad to get rid of a girl who is likely to thwart him."
+
+He went to sleep anticipating the charms of the marriage contract, and
+reflecting on the advantages of the step and the guarantees afforded
+for his happiness in the person he proposed to marry. In all the
+provinces there was certainly not a better brought-up or more
+delicately lovely young girl than Mademoiselle Claes. Her modesty, her
+grace, were like those of the pretty flower Emmanuel had feared to
+name lest he should betray the secret of his heart. Her sentiments
+were lofty, her principles religious, she would undoubtedly make him a
+faithful wife: moreover, she not only flattered the vanity which
+influences every man more or less in the choice of a wife, but she
+gratified his pride by the high consideration which her family, doubly
+ennobled, enjoyed in Flanders,--a consideration which her husband of
+course would share.
+
+The next day Pierquin extracted from his strong-box several thousand-
+franc notes, which he offered with great friendliness to Balthazar, so
+as to relieve him of pecuniary annoyance in the midst of his grief.
+Touched by this delicate attention, Balthazar would, he thought,
+praise his goodness and his personal qualities to Marguerite. In this
+he was mistaken. Monsieur Claes and his daughter thought it was a very
+natural action, and their sorrow was too absorbing to let them even
+think of the lawyer.
+
+Balthazar's despair was indeed so great that persons who were disposed
+to blame his conduct could not do otherwise than forgive him,--less on
+account of the Science which might have excused him, than for the
+remorse which could not undo his deeds. Society is satisfied by
+appearances: it takes what it gives, without considering the intrinsic
+worth of the article. To the world real suffering is a show, a species
+of enjoyment, which inclines it to absolve even a criminal; in its
+thirst for emotions it acquits without judging the man who raises a
+laugh, or he who makes it weep, making no inquiry into their methods.
+
+Marguerite was just nineteen when her father put her in charge of the
+household; and her brothers and sister, whom Madame Claes in her last
+moments exhorted to obey their elder sister, accepted her authority
+with docility. Her mourning attire heightened the dewy whiteness of
+her skin, just as the sadness of her expression threw into relief the
+gentleness and patience of her manner. From the first she gave proofs
+of feminine courage, of inalterable serenity, like that of angels
+appointed to shed peace on suffering hearts by a touch of their waving
+palms. But although she trained herself, through a premature
+perception of duty, to hide her personal grief, it was none the less
+bitter; her calm exterior was not in keeping with the deep trouble of
+her thoughts, and she was destined to undergo, too early in life,
+those terrible outbursts of feeling which no heart is wholly able to
+subdue: her father was to hold her incessantly under the pressure of
+natural youthful generosity on the one hand, and the dictates of
+imperious duty on the other. The cares which came upon her the very
+day of her mother's death threw her into a struggle with the interests
+of life at an age when young girls are thinking only of its pleasures.
+Dreadful discipline of suffering, which is never lacking to angelic
+natures!
+
+The love which rests on money or on vanity is the most persevering of
+passions. Pierquin resolved to win the heiress without delay. A few
+days after Madame Claes's death he took occasion to speak to
+Marguerite, and began operations with a cleverness which might have
+succeeded if love had not given her the power of clear insight and
+saved her from mistaking appearances that were all the more specious
+because Pierquin displayed his natural kindheartedness,--the
+kindliness of a notary who thinks himself loving while he protects a
+client's money. Relying on his rather distant relationship and his
+constant habit of managing the business and sharing the secrets of the
+Claes family, sure of the esteem and friendship of the father, greatly
+assisted by the careless inattention of that servant of science who
+took no thought for the marriage of his daughter, and not suspecting
+that Marguerite could prefer another,--Pierquin unguardedly enabled
+her to form a judgment on a suit in which there was no passion except
+that of self-interest, always odious to a young soul, and which he was
+not clever enough to conceal. It was he who on this occasion was
+naively above-board, it was she who dissimulated,--simply because he
+thought he was dealing with a defenceless girl, and wholly
+misconceived the privileges of weakness.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Marguerite, with whom he was walking
+about the paths of the little garden, "you know my heart, you
+understand how truly I desire to respect the painful feelings which
+absorb you at this moment. I have too sensitive a nature for a lawyer;
+I live by my heart only, I am forced to spend my time on the interests
+of others when I would fain let myself enjoy the sweet emotions which
+make life happy. I suffer deeply in being obliged to talk to you of
+subjects so discordant with your state of mind, but it is necessary. I
+have thought much about you during the last few days. It is evident
+that through a fatal delusion the fortune of your brothers and sister
+and your own are in jeopardy. Do you wish to save your family from
+complete ruin?"
+
+"What must I do?" she asked, half-frightened by his words.
+
+"Marry," answered Pierquin.
+
+"I shall not marry," she said.
+
+"Yes, you will marry," replied the notary, "when you have soberly
+thought over the critical position in which you are placed."
+
+"How can my marriage save--"
+
+"Ah! I knew you would consider it, my dear cousin," he exclaimed,
+interrupting her. "Marriage will emancipate you."
+
+"Why should I be emancipated?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Because marriage will put you at once into possession of your
+property, my dear little cousin," said the lawyer in a tone of
+triumph. "If you marry you take your share of your mother's property.
+To give it to you, the whole property must be liquidated; to do that,
+it becomes necessary to sell the forest of Waignies. That done, the
+proceeds will be capitalized, and your father, as guardian, will be
+compelled to invest the fortune of his children in such a way that
+Chemistry can't get hold of it."
+
+"And if I do not marry, what will happen?" she asked.
+
+"Well," said the notary, "your father will manage your estate as he
+pleases. If he returns to making gold, he will probably sell the
+timber of the forest of Waignies and leave his children as naked as
+the little Saint Johns. The forest is now worth about fourteen hundred
+thousand francs; but from one day to another you are not sure your
+father won't cut it down, and then your thirteen hundred acres are not
+worth three hundred thousand francs. Isn't it better to avoid this
+almost certain danger by at once compelling the division of property
+on your marriage? If the forest is sold now, while Chemistry has gone
+to sleep, your father will put the proceeds into the Grand-Livre. The
+Funds are at 59; those dear children will get nearly five thousand
+francs a year for every fifty thousand francs: and, inasmuch as the
+property of minors cannot be sold out, your brothers and sister will
+find their fortunes doubled in value by the time they come of age.
+Whereas, in the other case,--faith, no one knows what may happen: your
+father has already impaired your mother's property; we shall find out
+the deficit when we come to make the inventory. If he is in debt to
+her estate, you will take a mortgage on his, and in that way something
+may be recovered--"
+
+"For shame!" said Marguerite. "It would be an outrage on my father. It
+is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have
+forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children," she
+continued, giving way to tears of distress. "You misunderstand him,
+Monsieur Pierquin."
+
+"But, my dear cousin, if your father gets back to chemistry--"
+
+"We are ruined; is that what you mean?"
+
+"Yes, utterly ruined. Believe me, Marguerite," he said, taking her
+hand which he placed upon his heart, "I should fail of my duty if I
+did not persist in this matter. Your interests alone--"
+
+"Monsieur," said Marguerite, coldly withdrawing her hand, "the true
+interests of my family require me not to marry. My mother thought so."
+
+"Cousin," he cried, with the earnestness of a man who sees a fortune
+escaping him, "you commit suicide; you fling your mother's property
+into a gulf. Well, I will prove the devotion I feel for you: you know
+not how I love you. I have admired you from the day of that last ball,
+three years ago; you were enchanting. Trust the voice of love when it
+speaks to you of your own interests, Marguerite." He paused. "Yes, we
+must call a family council and emancipate you--without consulting
+you," he added.
+
+"But what is it to be emancipated?"
+
+"It is to enjoy your own rights."
+
+"If I can be emancipated without being married, why do you want me to
+marry? and whom should I marry?"
+
+Pierquin tried to look tenderly at his cousin, but the expression
+contrasted so strongly with his hard eyes, usually fixed on money,
+that Marguerite discovered the self-interest in his improvised
+tenderness.
+
+"You would marry the person who--pleases you--the most," he said. "A
+husband is indispensable, were it only as a matter of business. You
+are now entering upon a struggle with your father; can you resist him
+all alone?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I shall know how to protect my brothers and sister
+when the time comes."
+
+"Pshaw! the obstinate creature," thought Pierquin. "No, you will not
+resist him," he said aloud.
+
+"Let us end the subject," she said.
+
+"Adieu, cousin, I shall endeavor to serve you in spite of yourself; I
+will prove my love by protecting you against your will from a disaster
+which all the town foresees."
+
+"I thank you for the interest you take in me," she answered; "but I
+entreat you to propose nothing and to undertake nothing which may give
+pain to my father."
+
+Marguerite stood thoughtfully watching Pierquin as he departed; she
+compared his metallic voice, his manners, flexible as a steel spring,
+his glance, servile rather than tender, with the mute melodious poetry
+in which Emmanuel's sentiments were wrapped. No matter what may be
+said, or what may be done, there exists a wonderful magnetism whose
+effects never deceive. The tones of the voice, the glance, the
+passionate gestures of a lover may be imitated; a young girl can be
+deluded by a clever comedian; but to succeed, the man must be alone in
+the field. If the young girl has another soul beside her whose pulses
+vibrate in unison with hers, she is able to distinguish the
+expressions of a true love. Emmanuel, like Marguerite, felt the
+influence of the chords which, from the time of their first meeting
+had gathered ominously about their heads, hiding from their eyes the
+blue skies of love. His feeling for the Elect of his heart was an
+idolatry which the total absence of hope rendered gentle and
+mysterious in its manifestations. Socially too far removed from
+Mademoiselle Claes by his want of fortune, with nothing but a noble
+name to offer her, he saw no chance of ever being her husband. Yet he
+had always hoped for certain encouragements which Marguerite refused
+to give before the failing eyes of her dying mother. Both equally
+pure, they had never said to one another a word of love. Their joys
+were solitary joys tasted by each alone. They trembled apart, though
+together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope. They seemed
+to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged to
+the other. Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the
+sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact
+would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have
+mastered the force of his passion. And yet, while neither bestowed the
+vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love
+that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed in
+each other's hearts that both were ready to make the greatest
+sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could
+expect to taste.
+
+Since Madame Claes's death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
+The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the
+first, were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears.
+Marguerite's reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise
+exacted by her mother. With more freedom of action, she nevertheless
+became more distant. Emmanuel shared his beloved's grief,
+comprehending that the slightest word or wish of love at such a time
+transgressed the laws of the heart. Their love was therefore more
+concealed than it had ever been. These tender souls sounded the same
+note: held apart by grief, as formerly by the timidities of youth and
+by respect for the sufferings of the mother, they clung to the
+magnificent language of the eyes, the mute eloquence of devoted
+actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine harmonies of youth,
+the first steps of a love still in its infancy. Emmanuel came every
+morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he never entered the
+dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring a letter from
+Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in. His first glance at
+the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic thoughts; it told her
+that he suffered under these conventional restraints, that he never
+left her, he was always with her, he shared her grief. He shed the
+tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear one by a look that was
+marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart lived so completely
+in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness which he believed to
+be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached herself for not
+generously holding out her hand and saying, "Let us at least be
+friends."
+
+Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the
+unreflecting patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary
+rules of the multitude when judging of women. He believed that the
+words marriage, freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind,
+would geminate and flower into wishes by which he could profit; he
+imagined that her coldness was mere dissimulation. But surround her as
+he would with gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways
+of a man accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families
+with a high hand. He discoursed to her in those platitudes of
+consolation common to his profession, which crawl like snails over the
+suffering mind, leaving behind them a trail of barren words which
+profane its sanctity. His tenderness was mere wheedling. He dropped
+his feigned melancholy at the door when he put on his overshoes, or
+took his umbrella. He used the tone his long intimacy authorized as an
+instrument to work himself still further into the bosom of the family,
+and bring Marguerite to a marriage which the whole town was beginning
+to foresee. The true, devoted, respectful love formed a striking
+contrast to its selfish, calculating semblance. Each man's conduct was
+homogenous: one feigned a passion and seized every advantage to gain
+the prize; the other hid his love and trembled lest he should betray
+his devotion.
+
+Some time after the death of her mother, and, as it happened, on the
+same day, Marguerite was enabled to compare the only two men of whom
+she had any opportunity of judging; for the social solitude to which
+she was condemned kept her from seeing life and gave no access to
+those who might think of her in marriage. One day after breakfast, a
+fine morning in April, Emmanuel called at the house just as Monsieur
+Claes was going out. The aspect of his own house was so unendurable to
+Balthazar that he spent part of every day in walking about the
+ramparts. Emmanuel made a motion as if to follow him, then he
+hesitated, seemed to gather up his courage, looked at Marguerite and
+remained. The young girl felt sure that he wished to speak with her,
+and asked him to go into the garden; then she sent Felicie to Martha,
+who was sewing in the antechamber on the upper floor, and seated
+herself on a garden-seat in full view of her sister and the old
+duenna.
+
+"Monsieur Claes is as much absorbed by grief as he once was by
+science," began the young man, watching Balthazar as he slowly crossed
+the court-yard. "Every one in Douai pities him; he moves like a man
+who has lost all consciousness of life; he stops without a purpose, he
+gazes without seeing anything."
+
+"Every sorrow has its own expression," said Marguerite, checking her
+tears. "What is it you wish to say to me?" she added after a pause,
+coldly and with dignity.
+
+"Mademoiselle," answered Emmanuel in a voice of feeling, "I scarcely
+know if I have the right to speak to you as I am about to do. Think
+only of my desire to be of service to you, and give me the right of a
+teacher to be interested in the future of a pupil. Your brother
+Gabriel is over fifteen; he is in the second class; it is now
+necessary to direct his studies in the line of whatever future career
+he may take up. It is for your father to decide what that career shall
+be: if he gives the matter no thought, the injury to Gabriel would be
+serious. But then, again, would it not mortify your father if you
+showed him that he is neglecting his son's interests? Under these
+circumstances, could you not yourself consult Gabriel as to his
+tastes, and help him to choose a career, so that later, if his father
+should think of making him a public officer, an administrator, a
+soldier, he might be prepared with some special training? I do not
+suppose that either you or Monsieur Claes would wish to bring Gabriel
+up in idleness."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Marguerite; "when my mother taught us to make lace, and
+took such pains with our drawing and music and embroidery, she often
+said we must be prepared for whatever might happen to us. Gabriel
+ought to have a thorough education and a personal value. But tell me,
+what career is best for a man to choose?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, "Gabriel is at
+the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the
+Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge
+which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can
+choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias. Thus,
+without compromising his future, you will have saved a great deal of
+time. Men who leave the Ecole with honors are sought after on all
+sides; the school turns out statesmen, diplomats, men of science,
+engineers, generals, sailors, magistrates, manufacturers, and bankers.
+There is nothing extraordinary in the son of a rich or noble family
+preparing himself to enter it. If Gabriel decides on this course I
+shall ask you to--will you grant my request? Say yes!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Let me be his tutor," he answered, trembling.
+
+Marguerite looked at Monsieur de Solis; then she took his hand, and
+said, "Yes"--and paused, adding presently in a broken voice:--
+
+"How much I value the delicacy which makes you offer me a thing I can
+accept from you. In all that you have said I see how much you have
+thought for us. I thank you."
+
+Though the words were simply said, Emmanuel turned away his head not
+to show the tears that the delight of being useful to her brought to
+his eyes.
+
+"I will bring both boys to see you," he said, when he was a little
+calmer; "to-morrow is a holiday."
+
+He rose and bowed to Marguerite, who followed him into the house; when
+he had crossed the court-yard he turned and saw her still at the door
+of the dining-room, from which she made him a friendly sign.
+
+After dinner Pierquin came to see Monsieur Claes, and sat down between
+father and daughter on the very bench in the garden where Emmanuel had
+sat that morning.
+
+"My dear cousin," he said to Balthazar, "I have come to-night to talk
+to you on business. It is now forty-two days since the decease of your
+wife."
+
+"I keep no account of time," said Balthazar, wiping away the tears
+that came at the word "decease."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" cried Marguerite, looking at the lawyer, "how can
+you?"
+
+"But, my dear Marguerite, we notaries are obliged to consider the
+limits of time appointed by law. This is a matter which concerns you
+and your co-heirs. Monsieur Claes has none but minor children, and he
+must make an inventory of his property within forty-five days of his
+wife's decease, so as to render in his accounts at the end of that
+time. It is necessary to know the value of his property before
+deciding whether to accept it as sufficient security, or whether we
+must fall back on the legal rights of minors."
+
+Marguerite rose.
+
+"Do not go away, my dear cousin," continued Pierquin; "my words
+concern you--you and your father both. You know how truly I share your
+grief, but to-day you must give your attention to legal details. If
+you do not, every one of you will get into serious difficulties. I am
+only doing my duty as the family lawyer."
+
+"He is right," said Claes.
+
+"The time expires in two days," resumed Pierquin; "and I must begin
+the inventory to-morrow, if only to postpone the payment of the
+legacy-tax which the public treasurer will come here and demand.
+Treasurers have no hearts; they don't trouble themselves about
+feelings; they fasten their claws upon us at all seasons. Therefore
+for the next two days my clerk and I will be here from ten till four
+with Monsieur Raparlier, the public appraiser. After we get through
+the town property we shall go into the country. As for the forest of
+Waignies, we shall be obliged to hold a consultation about that. Now
+let us turn to another matter. We must call a family council and
+appoint a guardian to protect the interests of the minor children.
+Monsieur Conyncks of Bruges is your nearest relative; but he has now
+become a Belgian. You ought," continued Pierquin, addressing
+Balthazar, "to write to him on this matter; you can then find out if
+he has any intention of settling in France, where he has a fine
+property. Perhaps you could persuade him and his daughter to move into
+French Flanders. If he refuses, then I must see about making up the
+council with the other near relatives."
+
+"What is the use of an inventory?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"To put on record the value and the claims of the property, its debts
+and its assets. When that is all clearly scheduled, the family
+council, acting on behalf of the minors, makes such dispositions as it
+sees fit."
+
+"Pierquin," said Claes, rising from the bench, "do all that is
+necessary to protect the rights of my children; but spare us the
+distress of selling the things that belonged to my dear--" he was
+unable to continue; but he spoke with so noble an air and in a tone of
+such deep feeling that Marguerite took her father's hand and kissed
+it.
+
+"To-morrow, then," said Pierquin.
+
+"Come to breakfast," said Claes; then he seemed to gather his
+scattered senses together and exclaimed: "But in my marriage contract,
+which was drawn under the laws of Hainault, I released my wife from
+the obligation of making an inventory, in order that she might not be
+annoyed by it: it is very probable that I was equally released--"
+
+"Oh, what happiness!" cried Marguerite. "It would have been so
+distressing to us."
+
+"Well, I will look into your marriage contract to-morrow," said the
+notary, rather confused.
+
+"Then you did not know of this?" said Marguerite.
+
+This remark closed the interview; the lawyer was far too much confused
+to continue it after the young girl's comment.
+
+"The devil is in it!" he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard.
+"That man's wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,--
+just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against
+him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those children.
+I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding with old
+Conyncks, and here's the end of it! I shall lose ground with
+Marguerite, for she will certainly ask her father why I wanted an
+inventory of the property, which she now sees was not necessary; and
+Claes will tell her that notaries have a passion for writing
+documents, that we are lawyers above all, above cousins or friends or
+relatives, and all such stuff as that."
+
+He slammed the street door violently, railing at clients who ruin
+themselves by sensitiveness.
+
+Balthazar was right. No inventory could be made. Nothing, therefore,
+was done to settle the relation of the father to the children in the
+matter of property.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Several months went by and brought no change to the House of Claes.
+Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis,
+worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass
+the necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique.
+Marguerite and Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer
+to their father's country place as a measure of economy. Monsieur
+Claes attended to his business affairs, paid his debts by borrowing a
+considerable sum of money on his property, and went to see the forest
+at Waignies.
+
+About the middle of the year 1817, his grief, slowly abating, left him
+a prey to solitude and defenceless under the monotony of the life he
+was leading, which heavily oppressed him. At first he struggled
+bravely against the allurements of Science as they gradually beset
+him; he forbade himself even to think of Chemistry. Then he did think
+of it. Still, he would not actively take it up, and only gave his mind
+to his researches theoretically. Such constant study, however, swelled
+his passion which soon became exacting. He asked himself whether he
+was really bound not to continue his researches, and remembered that
+his wife had refused his oath. Though he had pledged his word to
+himself that he would never pursue the solution of the great Problem,
+might he not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw
+success? He was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant
+idea contracts a certain peevish fixedness which is the first stage of
+monomania.
+
+Circumstances conspired against his tottering loyalty. The peace which
+Europe now enjoyed encouraged the circulation of discoveries and
+scientific ideas acquired during the war by the learned of various
+countries, who for nearly twenty years had been unable to hold
+communication. Science was making great strides. Claes found that the
+progress of chemistry had been directed, unknown to chemists
+themselves, towards the object of his researches. Learned men devoted
+to the higher sciences thought, as he did, that light, heat,
+electricity, galvanism, magnetism were all different effects of the
+same cause, and that the difference existing between substances
+hitherto considered simple must be produced by varying proportions of
+an unknown principle. The fear that some other chemist might effect
+the reduction of metals and discover the constituent principle of
+electricity,--two achievements which would lead to the solution of the
+chemical Absolute,--increased what the people of Douai called a mania,
+and drove his desires to a paroxysm conceivable to those who devote
+themselves to the sciences, or who have ever known the tyranny of
+ideas.
+
+Thus it happened that Balthazar was again carried away by a passion
+all the more violent because it had lain dormant so long. Marguerite,
+who watched every evidence of her father's state of mind, opened the
+long-closed parlor. By living in it she recalled the painful memories
+which her mother's death had caused, and succeeded for a time in re-
+awaking her father's grief, and retarding his plunge into the gulf to
+the depths of which he was, nevertheless, doomed to fall. She
+determined to go into society and force Balthazar to share in its
+distractions. Several good marriages were proposed to her, which
+occupied Claes's mind, but to all of them she replied that she should
+not marry until after she was twenty-five. But in spite of his
+daughter's efforts, in spite of his remorseful struggles, Balthazar,
+at the beginning of the winter, returned secretly to his researches.
+It was difficult, however, to hide his operations from the inquisitive
+women in the kitchen; and one morning Martha, while dressing
+Marguerite, said to her:--
+
+"Mademoiselle, we are as good as lost. That monster of a Mulquinier--
+who is a devil disguised, for I never saw him make the sign of the
+cross--has gone back to the garret. There's monsieur on the high-road
+to hell. Pray God he mayn't kill you as he killed my poor mistress."
+
+"It is not possible!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"Come and see the signs of their traffic."
+
+Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising
+from the flue of the laboratory.
+
+"I shall be twenty-one in a few months," she thought, "and I shall
+know how to oppose the destruction of our property."
+
+In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
+for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
+happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
+more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth
+in his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a
+man profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he
+worked night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did
+not know how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.
+
+Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
+retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy
+of a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes
+never noticed the change which reduced the household living to the
+merest necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then
+he only left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before
+he went to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his
+daughters without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go
+upstairs they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically
+to kiss him on both cheeks. Such conduct would have led to great
+domestic misfortunes had Marguerite not been prepared to exercise the
+authority of a mother, and if, moreover, she were not protected by a
+secret love from the dangers of so much liberty.
+
+Pierquin had ceased to come to the house, judging that the family ruin
+would soon be complete. Balthazar's rural estates, which yielded
+sixteen thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred
+thousand, were now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three
+hundred thousand francs; for, in order to recommence his researches,
+Claes had borrowed a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly
+enough to pay the interest of the mortgages; but, with the
+improvidence of a man who is the slave of an idea, he made over the
+income of his farm lands to Marguerite for the expenses of the
+household, and the notary calculated that three years would suffice to
+bring matters to a crisis, when the law would step in and eat up all
+that Balthazar had not squandered. Marguerite's coldness brought
+Pierquin to a state of almost hostile indifference. To give himself an
+appearance in the eyes of the world of having renounced her hand, he
+frequently remarked of the Claes family in a tone of compassion:--
+
+"Those poor people are ruined; I have done my best to save them. Well,
+it can't be helped; Mademoiselle Claes refused to employ the legal
+means which might have rescued them from poverty."
+
+Emmanuel de Solis, who was now principal of the college-school in
+Douai, thanks to the influence of his uncle and to his own merits
+which made him worthy of the post, came every evening to see the two
+young girls, who called the old duenna into the parlor as soon as
+their father had gone to bed. Emmanuel's gentle rap at the street-door
+was never missing. For the last three months, encouraged by the
+gracious, though mute gratitude with which Marguerite now accepted his
+attentions, he became at his ease, and was seen for what he was. The
+brightness of his pure spirit shone like a flawless diamond;
+Marguerite learned to understand its strength and its constancy when
+she saw how inexhaustible was the source from which it came. She loved
+to watch the unfolding, one by one, of the blossoms of his heart,
+whose perfume she had already breathed. Each day Emmanuel realized
+some one of Marguerite's hopes, and illumined the enchanted regions of
+love with new lights that chased away the clouds and brought to view
+the serene heavens, giving color to the fruitful riches hidden away in
+the shadow of their lives. More at his ease, the young man could
+display the seductive qualities of his heart until now discreetly
+hidden, the expansive gaiety of his age, the simplicity which comes of
+a life of study, the treasures of a delicate mind that life has not
+adulterated, the innocent joyousness which goes so well with loving
+youth. His soul and Marguerite's understood each other better; they
+went together to the depths of their hearts and found in each the same
+thoughts,--pearls of equal lustre, sweet fresh harmonies like those
+the legends tell of beneath the waves, which fascinate the divers.
+They made themselves known to one another by an interchange of
+thought, a reciprocal introspection which bore the signs, in both, of
+exquisite sensibility. It was done without false shame, but not
+without mutual coquetry. The two hours which Emmanuel spent with the
+sisters and old Martha enabled Marguerite to accept the life of
+anguish and renunciation on which she had entered. This artless,
+progressive love was her support. In all his testimonies of affection
+Emmanuel showed the natural grace that is so winning, the sweet yet
+subtile mind which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of
+a diamond relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the
+stone,--adorable wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a
+woman pliant to the artistic hand that gives new life to old, old
+forms, and refreshes with novel modulations the phrases of love. Love
+is not only a sentiment, it is an art. Some simple word, a trifling
+vigilance, a nothing, reveals to a woman the great, the divine artist
+who shall touch her heart and yet not blight it. The more Emmanuel was
+free to utter himself, the more charming were the expressions of his
+love.
+
+"I have tried to get here before Pierquin," he said to Marguerite one
+evening. "He is bringing some bad news; I would rather you heard it
+from me. Your father has sold all the timber in your forest at
+Waignies to speculators, who have resold it to dealers. The trees are
+already felled, and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received
+three hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the
+price, which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to
+clear off his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred
+thousand francs of the three hundred thousand still due to him on the
+purchase-money."
+
+Pierquin entered at this moment.
+
+"Ah! my dear cousin," he said, "you are ruined. I told you how it
+would be; but you would not listen to me. Your father has an
+insatiable appetite. He has swallowed your woods at a mouthful. Your
+family guardian, Monsieur Conyncks, is just now absent in Amsterdam,
+and Claes has seized the opportunity to strike the blow. It is all
+wrong. I have written to Monsieur Conyncks, but he will get here too
+late; everything will be squandered. You will be obliged to sue your
+father. The suit can't be long, but it will be dishonorable. Monsieur
+Conyncks has no alternative but to institute proceedings; the law
+requires it. This is the result of your obstinacy. Do you now see my
+prudence, and how devoted I was to your interests?"
+
+"I bring you some good news, mademoiselle," said young de Solis in his
+gentle voice. "Gabriel has been admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique.
+The difficulties that seemed in the way have all been removed."
+
+Marguerite thanked him with a smile as she said:--
+
+"My savings will now come in play! Martha, we must begin to-morrow on
+Gabriel's outfit. My poor Felicie, we shall have to work hard," she
+added, kissing her sister's forehead.
+
+"To-morrow you shall have him at home, to remain ten days," said
+Emmanuel; "he must be in Paris by the fifteenth of November."
+
+"My cousin Gabriel has done a sensible thing," said the lawyer, eyeing
+the professor from head to foot; "for he will have to make his own
+way. But, my dear cousin, the question now is how to save the honor of
+the family: will you listen to what I say this time?"
+
+"No," she said, "not if it relates to marriage."
+
+"Then what will you do?"
+
+"I?--nothing."
+
+"But you are of age."
+
+"I shall be in a few days. Have you any course to suggest to me," she
+added, "which will reconcile our interests with the duty we owe to our
+father and to the honor of the family?"
+
+"My dear cousin, nothing can be done till your uncle arrives. When he
+does, I will call again."
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Marguerite.
+
+"The poorer she is the more airs she gives herself," thought the
+notary. "Adieu, mademoiselle," he said aloud. "Monsieur, my respects
+to you"; and he went away, paying no attention to Felicie or Martha.
+
+"I have been studying the Code for the last two days, and I have
+consulted an experienced old lawyer, a friend of my uncle," said
+Emmanuel, in a hesitating voice. "If you will allow me, I will go to
+Amsterdam to-morrow and see Monsieur Conyncks. Listen, dear
+Marguerite--"
+
+He uttered her name for the first time; she thanked him with a smile
+and a tearful glance, and made a gentle inclination of her head. He
+paused, looking at Felicie and Martha.
+
+"Speak before my sister," said Marguerite. "She is so docile and
+courageous that she does not need this discussion to make her resigned
+to our life of toil and privation; but it is best that she should see
+for herself how necessary courage is to us."
+
+The two sisters clasped hands and kissed each other, as if to renew
+some pledge of union before the coming disaster.
+
+"Leave us, Martha."
+
+"Dear Marguerite," said Emmanuel, letting the happiness he felt in
+conquering the lesser rights of affection sound in the inflections of
+his voice, "I have procured the names and addresses of the purchasers
+who still owe the remaining two hundred thousand francs on the felled
+timber. To-morrow, if you give consent, a lawyer acting in the name of
+Monsieur Conyncks, who will not disavow the act, will serve an
+injunction upon them. Six days hence, by which time your uncle will
+have returned, the family council can be called together, and Gabriel
+put in possession of his legal rights, for he is now eighteen. You and
+your brother being thus authorized to use those rights, you will
+demand your share in the proceeds of the timber. Monsieur Claes cannot
+refuse you the two hundred thousand francs on which the injunction
+will have been put; as to the remaining hundred thousand which is due
+to you, you must obtain a mortgage on this house. Monsieur Conyncks
+will demand securities for the three hundred thousand belonging to
+Felicie and Jean. Under these circumstances your father will be
+obliged to mortgage his property on the plain of Orchies, which he has
+already encumbered to the amount of three hundred thousand francs. The
+law gives a retrospective priority to the claims of minors; and that
+will save you. Monsieur Claes's hands will be tied for the future;
+your property becomes inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his
+own estates because they will be held as security for other sums.
+Moreover, the whole can be done quietly, without scandal or legal
+proceedings. Your father will be forced to greater prudence in making
+his researches, even if he cannot be persuaded to relinquish them
+altogether."
+
+"Yes," said Marguerite, "but where, meantime, can we find the means of
+living? The hundred thousand francs for which, you say, I must obtain
+a mortgage on this house, would bring in nothing while we still live
+here. The proceeds of my father's property in the country will pay the
+interest on the three hundred thousand francs he owes to others; but
+how are we to live?"
+
+"In the first place," said Emmanuel, "by investing the fifty thousand
+francs which belong to Gabriel in the public Funds you will get,
+according to present rates, more than four thousand francs' income,
+which will suffice to pay your brother's board and lodging and all his
+other expenses in Paris. Gabriel cannot touch the capital until he is
+of age, therefore you need not fear that he will waste a penny of it,
+and you will have one expense the less. Besides, you will have your
+own fifty thousand."
+
+"My father will ask me for them," she said in a frightened tone; "and
+I shall not be able to refuse him."
+
+"Well, dear Marguerite, even so, you can evade that by robbing
+yourself. Place your money in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name: it
+will bring you twelve or thirteen thousand francs a year. Minors who
+are emancipated cannot sell property without permission of the family
+council; you will thus gain three years' peace of mind. By that time
+your father will either have solved his problem or renounced it; and
+Gabriel, then of age, will reinvest the money in your own name."
+
+Marguerite made him explain to her once more the legal points which
+she did not at first understand. It was certainly a novel sight to see
+this pair of lovers poring over the Code, which Emmanuel had brought
+with him to show his mistress the laws which protected the property of
+minors; she quickly caught the meaning of them, thanks to the natural
+penetration of women, which in this case love still further sharpened.
+
+Gabriel came home to his father's house on the following day. When
+Monsieur de Solis brought him up to Balthazar and told of his
+admission to the Ecole Polytechnique, the father thanked the professor
+with a wave of his hand, and said:--
+
+"I am very glad; Gabriel may become a man of science."
+
+"Oh, my brother," cried Marguerite, as Balthazar went back to his
+laboratory, "work hard, waste no money; spend what is necessary, but
+practise economy. On the days when you are allowed to go out, pass
+your time with our friends and relations; contract none of the habits
+which ruin young men in Paris. Your expenses will amount to nearly
+three thousand francs, and that will leave you a thousand francs for
+your pocket-money; that is surely enough."
+
+"I will answer for him," said Emmanuel de Solis, laying his hand on
+his pupil's shoulder.
+
+A month later, Monsieur Conyncks, in conjunction with Marguerite, had
+obtained all necessary securities from Claes. The plan so wisely
+proposed by Emmanuel de Solis was fully approved and executed. Face to
+face with the law, and in presence of his cousin, whose stern sense of
+honor allowed no compromise, Balthazar, ashamed of the sale of the
+timber to which he had consented at a moment when he was harassed by
+creditors, submitted to all that was demanded of him. Glad to repair
+the almost involuntary wrong that he had done to his children, he
+signed the deeds in a preoccupied way. He was now as careless and
+improvident as a Negro who sells his wife in the morning for a drop of
+brandy, and cries for her at night. He gave no thought to even the
+immediate future, and never asked himself what resources he would have
+when his last ducat was melted up. He pursued his work and continued
+his purchases, apparently unaware that he was now no more than the
+titular owner of his house and lands, and that he could not, thanks to
+the severity of the laws, raise another penny upon a property of which
+he was now, as it were, the legal guardian.
+
+The year 1818 ended without bringing any new misfortune. The sisters
+paid the costs of Jean's education and met all the expenses of the
+household out of the thirteen thousand francs a year from the sum
+placed in the Grand-Livre in Gabriel's name, which he punctually
+remitted to them. Monsieur de Solis lost his uncle, the abbe, in
+December of that year.
+
+Early in January Marguerite learned through Martha that her father had
+sold his collection of tulips, also the furniture of the front house,
+and all the family silver. She was obliged to buy back the spoons and
+forks that were necessary for the daily service of the table, and
+these she now ordered to be stamped with her initials. Until that day
+Marguerite had kept silence towards her father on the subject of his
+depredations, but that evening after dinner she requested Felicie to
+leave her alone with him, and when he seated himself as usual by the
+corner of the parlor fireplace, she said:--
+
+"My dear father, you are the master here, and can sell everything,
+even your children. We are ready to obey you without a murmur; but I
+am forced to tell you that we are without money, that we have barely
+enough to live on, and that Felicie and I are obliged to work night
+and day to pay for the schooling of little Jean with the price of the
+lace dress we are now making. My dear father, I implore you to give up
+your researches."
+
+"You are right, my dear child; in six weeks they will be finished; I
+shall have found the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved
+undiscoverable. You will have millions--"
+
+"Give us meanwhile the bread to eat," replied Marguerite.
+
+"Bread? is there no bread here?" said Claes, with a frightened air.
+"No bread in the house of a Claes! What has become of our property?"
+
+"You have cut down the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been
+cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies,
+the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you have
+borrowed--"
+
+"Then what are we living on?" he demanded.
+
+Marguerite held up her needle and continued:--
+
+"Gabriel's income helps us, but it is insufficient; I can make both
+ends meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with
+bills that I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about.
+When I think I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some
+unexpected bill for potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me."
+
+"My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
+judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders."
+
+"It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
+everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least,
+refrain from making debts."
+
+"I don't wish to make any more!" he said.
+
+"Any more?" she cried, "then you have some?"
+
+"Mere trifles," he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.
+
+For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
+lowering of her father's character, and suffered from it so much that
+she dared not question him.
+
+A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
+exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
+banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
+notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
+the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
+amount, falling due in consecutive months.
+
+"All is over!" cried Marguerite, "the time has come."
+
+She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
+steps, talking to herself:--
+
+"A hundred thousand francs!" she cried. "I must find them, or see my
+father in prison. What am I to do?"
+
+Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up
+to the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an
+immense, brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty
+glass vessels: here and there were books, and tables encumbered with
+specimens and products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the
+disorder of scientific pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish
+habits. This litter of retorts and vaporizers, metals, fantastically
+colored crystals, specimens hooked upon the walls or lying on the
+furnaces, surrounded the central figure of Balthazar Claes, without a
+coat, his arms bare like those of a workman, his breast exposed, and
+showing the white hair which covered it. His eyes were gazing with
+horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough. The receiver of this instrument
+was covered with a lens made of double convex glasses, the space
+between the glasses being filled with alchohol, which focussed the
+light coming through one of the compartments of the rose-window of the
+garret. The shelf of the receiver communicated with the wire of an
+immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier, busy at the moment in moving
+the pedestal of the machine, which was placed on a movable axle so as
+to keep the lens in a perpendicular direction to the rays of the sun,
+turned round, his face black with dust, and called out,--
+
+"Ha! mademoiselle, don't come in."
+
+The aspect of her father, half-kneeling beside the instrument, and
+receiving the full strength of the sunlight upon his head, the
+protuberances of his skull, its scanty hairs resembling threads of
+silver, his face contracted by the agonies of expectation, the
+strangeness of the objects that surrounded him, the obscurity of parts
+of the vast garret from which fantastic engines seemed about to
+spring, all contributed to startle Marguerite, who said to herself, in
+terror,--
+
+"He is mad!"
+
+Then she went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Send away
+Lemulquinier."
+
+"No, no, my child; I want him: I am in the midst of an experiment no
+one has yet thought of. For the last three days we have been watching
+for every ray of sun. I now have the means of submitting metals, in a
+complete vacuum, to concentrated solar fires and to electric currents.
+At this very moment the most powerful action a chemist can employ is
+about to show results which I alone--"
+
+"My father, instead of vaporizing metals you should employ them in
+paying your notes of hand--"
+
+"Wait, wait!"
+
+"Monsieur Merkstus has been here, father; and he must have ten
+thousand francs by four o'clock."
+
+"Yes, yes, presently. True, I did sign a little note which is payable
+this month. I felt sure I should have found the Absolute. Good God! If
+I could only have a July sun the experiment would be successful."
+
+He grasped his head and sat down on an old cane chair; a few tears
+rolled from his eyes.
+
+"Monsieur is quite right," said Lemulquinier; "it is all the fault of
+that rascally sun which is too feeble,--the coward, the lazy thing!"
+
+Master and valet paid no further attention to Marguerite.
+
+"Leave us, Mulquinier," she said.
+
+"Ah! I see a new experiment!" cried Claes.
+
+"Father, lay aside your experiments," said his daughter, when they
+were alone. "You have one hundred thousand francs to pay, and we have
+not a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What
+will become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white
+hairs and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will
+not allow it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would
+be dreadful to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes
+to our position; see reason at last!"
+
+"Madness!" cried Balthazar, struggling to his feet. He fixed his
+luminous eyes upon his daughter, crossed his arms on his breast, and
+repeated the word "Madness!" so majestically that Marguerite trembled.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "your mother would never have uttered that word to me.
+She was not ignorant of the importance of my researches; she learned a
+science to understand me; she recognized that I toiled for the human
+race; she knew there was nothing sordid or selfish in my aims. The
+feelings of a loving wife are higher, I see it now, than filial
+affection. Yes, Love is above all other feelings. See reason!" he went
+on, striking his breast. "Do I lack reason? Am I not myself? You say
+we are poor; well, my daughter, I choose it to be so. I am your
+father, obey me. I will make you rich when I please. Your fortune? it
+is a pittance! When I find the solvent of carbon I will fill your
+parlor with diamonds, and they are but a scintilla of what I seek. You
+can well afford to wait while I consume my life in superhuman
+efforts."
+
+"Father, I have no right to ask an account of the four millions you
+have already engulfed in this fatal garret. I will not speak to you of
+my mother whom you killed. If I had a husband, I should love him,
+doubtless, as she loved you; I should be ready to sacrifice all to
+him, as she sacrificed all for you. I have obeyed her orders in giving
+myself wholly to you; I have proved it in not marrying and compelling
+you to render an account of your guardianship. Let us dismiss the past
+and think of the present. I am here now to represent the necessity
+which you have created for yourself. You must have money to meet your
+notes--do you understand me? There is nothing left to seize here but
+the portrait of your ancestor, the Claes martyr. I come in the name of
+my mother, who felt herself too feeble to defend her children against
+their father; she ordered me to resist you. I come in the name of my
+brothers and my sister; I come, father, in the name of all the Claes,
+and I command you to give up your experiments, or earn the means of
+pursuing them hereafter, if pursue them you must. If you arm yourself
+with the power of your paternity, which you employ only for our
+destruction, I have on my side your ancestors and your honor, whose
+voice is louder than that of chemistry. The Family is greater than
+Science. I have been too long your daughter."
+
+"And you choose to be my executioner," he said, in a feeble voice.
+
+Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
+she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother's voice
+saying to her, "Do not oppose your father too much; love him well."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said
+Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. "We were
+just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a
+scrap of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he's almost in the
+shoes of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT," he said to
+Josette, clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting
+hold of the Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some
+nonsense about notes of hand."
+
+"Well, pay them yourself," said Martha, "out of your wages."
+
+"Where's the butter for my bread?" said Lemulquinier to the cook.
+
+"Where's the money to buy it?" she answered, sharply. "Come, old
+villain, if you make gold in that devil's kitchen of yours, why don't
+you make butter? 'Twouldn't be half so difficult, and you could sell
+it in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry
+bread. The young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do
+you expect to be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won't
+spend more than one hundred francs a month for the whole household.
+There's only one dinner for all. If you want dainties you've got your
+furnaces upstairs where you fricassee pearls till there's nothing else
+talked of in town. Get your roast chickens up there."
+
+Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
+
+"He will go and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha;
+"all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old
+scarecrow!"
+
+"Starve him! that's the only way to manage him," said Josette. "For a
+week past he hasn't rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
+he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with
+the present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay
+hands on them, I can tell him that."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Martha, "I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
+wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking a
+Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he'd be burned
+alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in
+Africa."
+
+Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
+gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother's letter, and read
+as follows:--
+
+  My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
+  when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
+  full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
+  have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
+  have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
+  my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
+  loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
+  could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
+  I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
+  misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
+  to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
+  Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
+  our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
+  francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
+
+  If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
+  no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
+  his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
+  live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
+  Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
+  may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
+  the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
+  pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
+  means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
+  yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
+  passion which has torn all things from me.
+
+  My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
+  Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
+  dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
+  may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
+  virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
+  purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
+  courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
+
+  And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
+  struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
+  tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
+  dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
+  upon to protect them.
+
+  May God and the saints be with you!
+
+Josephine.
+
+
+To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de
+Solis, uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the
+money entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
+children should present the paper.
+
+"Martha," cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; "go to
+Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble,
+discreet heart! he never told me," she thought; "though all my griefs
+and cares are his, he never told me!"
+
+Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
+
+"You have kept a secret from me," she said, showing him her mother's
+letter.
+
+Emmanuel bent his head.
+
+"Marguerite, are you in great trouble?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "be my support,--you, whom my mother calls 'our
+good Emmanuel.'" She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy
+in knowing that her mother approved her choice.
+
+"My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
+saw you in the gallery," he said; "but I scarcely dared to hope the
+time might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you
+know my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to
+your mother's wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions."
+
+"You have saved us," she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
+go down to the parlor.
+
+After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
+Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family
+now found themselves.
+
+"I must pay those notes at once," said Emmanuel. "If Merkstus holds
+them all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the
+remaining seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large
+sum in ducats, which are easy to carry secretly."
+
+"Oh!" she said, "bring them at night; we can hide them when my father
+is asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from
+me. Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!" she said,
+weeping and resting her forehead against the young man's heart.
+
+This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
+protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
+melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too
+full, was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
+
+"What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
+nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live
+in that garret, where the air is stifling."
+
+"What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard
+III., 'My kingdom for a horse'?" said Emmanuel. "He is pitiless; and
+in that you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will,
+your whole fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is
+neither yours nor his."
+
+"Give him my fortune?" she said, pressing her lover's hand and looking
+at him with ardor in her eyes; "you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told
+a hundred lies to make me keep it!"
+
+"Alas! I may be selfish in my own way," he said. "Sometimes I long for
+you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
+you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
+grandeurs of wealth can separate us."
+
+"Dear, let us not speak of ourselves."
+
+"Ourselves!" he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
+"The evil is great, but it is not irreparable."
+
+"It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head. To
+reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
+consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws,
+he has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
+the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
+fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?"
+
+"Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
+family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire
+him for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
+you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
+children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your
+father ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it
+costs him nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it."
+
+"My poor mother is happy," said Marguerite; "she would have suffered a
+thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
+Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless."
+
+"There is an end," said Emmanuel. "When you have nothing left,
+Monsieur Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop."
+
+"Let him stop now, then," cried Marguerite, "for we are without a
+penny!"
+
+Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes's notes and returned, bringing
+them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
+moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
+noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a
+father, reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the
+court-yard, then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone
+with his daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy
+kindness.
+
+"My child," he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
+tenderness, "forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
+wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
+wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold," he
+went on, pointing to the martyr's portrait. "He died for Liberty, I
+die for Science; he is venerated, I am hated."
+
+"Hated? oh, my father, no," she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
+"we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?" she said, turning to her
+sister who came in at the moment.
+
+"What is the matter, dear father?" said his youngest daughter, taking
+his hand.
+
+"I have ruined you."
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, "but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
+always at the head of his class."
+
+"See, father," said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
+way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the
+clock, "here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there
+is nothing left to pay them with--"
+
+"Then you have money?" whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he
+recovered from his surprise.
+
+His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
+joy and hope in her father's face as he looked about him to discover
+the gold.
+
+"Father," she said, "I have my own fortune."
+
+"Give it to me," he said with a rapacious gesture; "I will return you
+a hundred-fold."
+
+"Yes, I will give it to you," answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
+Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
+
+"Ah, my dear daughter!" he cried, "you save my life. I have thought of
+a last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this
+time, I do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to
+my arms, my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon
+earth. You give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow
+the power to heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you
+with jewels, with wealth."
+
+He kissed his daughter's forehead, took her hands and pressed them,
+and testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed
+almost obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked
+at her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
+mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
+rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of
+his attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature
+old age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the
+contrast of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt,
+sometimes by a glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the
+dining-room.
+
+"Well, well," he said, following her eyes, "in six months we shall
+fill them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a
+queen. Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all
+created beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita," he said,
+smiling, "thy name is a prophecy. 'Margarita' means a pearl. Sterne
+says so somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a
+Sterne? it would amuse you."
+
+"A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease," she answered; "we
+have suffered enough already."
+
+"Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you
+shall be rich and all-powerful."
+
+"Mademoiselle has got such a good heart," said Lemulquinier, whose
+seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
+
+For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
+the natural graces of his character and the charms of his
+conversation. Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out
+a magnetic fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness
+of spirit, which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were,
+his daughters into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found,
+for the first time in many months, the father and the children
+reunited. The young professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the
+influence of the scene; for Claes's manners and conversation had
+recovered their former irresistible seduction!
+
+Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
+ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
+nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they
+live. More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-
+minded, they are never in harmony with the life about them; they know
+and forget all; they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy
+to their own souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet they
+say nothing of all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes
+use their power to observe and recognize that which goes on around
+them, they are satisfied with having divined its meaning; their
+occupations hurry them on, and they frequently make false application
+of the knowledge they have acquired about the things of life.
+Sometimes they wake from their social apathy, or they drop from the
+world of thought to the world of life; at such times they come with
+well-stored memories, and are by no means strangers to what is
+happening.
+
+Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
+brain, knew his daughter's whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
+history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now
+showed this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part
+in it. It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the
+lovers were unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,--
+contrasting with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor
+children. When Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his
+family with light and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis,
+who had shown some embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets
+three thousand ducats in gold, the possession of which he had feared
+to betray. He placed them on the work-table, where Marguerite covered
+them with some linen she was mending; and then he went to his own
+house to fetch the rest of the money. When he returned, Felicie had
+gone to bed. Eleven o'clock struck; Martha, who sat up to undress her
+mistress, was still with Felicie.
+
+"Where can we hide it?" said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
+of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
+disastrous.
+
+"I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow," said Emmanuel;
+"you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
+looking for them there."
+
+Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-
+table to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing
+cry, and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they
+fell, and the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at
+the parlor door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
+
+"What are you doing," he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
+terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
+hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
+sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
+horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
+
+"I could not be mistaken," said Balthazar, sitting down; "I heard the
+sound of gold."
+
+He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
+beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the
+ticking of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled
+on the parlor.
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur de Solis," said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
+glance which meant, "Come to my rescue and help me to save this
+money."
+
+"What gold is this?" resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
+Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
+
+"This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
+to me that I may pay our debts honorably," she answered.
+
+Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
+caught him by the arm.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you must not escape my thanks."
+
+"Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
+Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own
+property," Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him
+with an almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
+
+"I shall not allow that," said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
+paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
+astonished young people. "How much is it?" His eager passion made him
+more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
+his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
+
+"Let us count it," he said.
+
+"There are six thousand ducats," said Emmanuel.
+
+"Seventy thousand francs," remarked Claes.
+
+The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "your note bears no value; pardon this purely
+technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
+thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means of
+paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
+hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
+can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
+that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
+denuded land of the forest of Waignies."
+
+Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
+that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel's purity of soul. Brought
+up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
+young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
+and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
+conscience.
+
+"Adieu, monsieur," said Balthazar, "I thought you had more confidence
+in a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father."
+
+After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
+out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
+
+The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
+
+"You love me, do you not?"
+
+"Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it."
+
+She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to
+gather them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite
+allowed him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two
+thousand ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a
+desperate air,--
+
+"Marguerite, I must have that money."
+
+"If you take it, it will be robbery," she replied coldly. "Hear me,
+father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred
+deaths a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield."
+
+"Do you mean to kill your father?"
+
+"We avenge our mother," she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
+Claes died.
+
+"My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
+those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
+problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me," he cried in accents of
+despair. "Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father.
+Yes, I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the
+word of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children
+are sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
+my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
+myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will
+do your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no
+longer be the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my
+authority. I swear by your mother's memory!" he cried, shedding tears.
+
+Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
+thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
+
+"Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!" he cried. "What are
+sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
+will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon
+my labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I
+will go away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the
+fortunes I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has
+taken from them."
+
+Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
+his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
+
+"Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I
+will myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you
+shall say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant
+and incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your
+hands. You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless
+you as the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your
+blood."
+
+"If it were my blood, my life's blood, I would give it to you," she
+cried; "but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and
+sister? No. Cease, cease!" she said, wiping her tears and pushing
+aside her father's caressing hands.
+
+"Sixty thousand francs and two months," he said, rising in anger;
+"that is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and
+wealth. I curse you!" he went on; "you are no daughter of mine, you
+are not a woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a
+wife!-- Give it to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious
+child, I will love you forever,"--and he stretched his hand with a
+movement of hideous energy towards the gold.
+
+"I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
+us now," she said, pointing to the picture.
+
+"Try to live, if you can, with your father's blood upon you," cried
+Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
+room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a
+beggar might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to
+which she replied by a negative motion of her head.
+
+"Farewell, my daughter," he said, gently, "may you live happy!"
+
+When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which
+separated her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost
+consciousness of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid
+the immensities of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits
+both of Time and Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the
+Future. It seemed to her that days elapsed between each footfall of
+her father as he went up the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over
+her as she heard him enter his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which
+flashed into her soul with the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran
+up the stairway, without light, without noise, with the velocity of an
+arrow, and saw her father with a pistol at his head.
+
+"Take all!" she cried, springing towards him.
+
+She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
+old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
+disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
+her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
+
+"Enough, father, enough," she said; "remember your promise. If you do
+not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, mother!" she cried, turning towards Madame Claes's chamber, "YOU
+would have given him all--would you not?"
+
+"Sleep in peace," said Balthazar, "you are a good daughter."
+
+"Sleep!" she said, "the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
+old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother's heart."
+
+"Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
+the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
+the truth."
+
+"I comprehend our ruin," she said, leaving him.
+
+The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
+spend the day.
+
+"Well?" he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
+
+"I yielded," she replied.
+
+"My dear life," he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, "if you had
+withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble,
+I adore you!"
+
+"Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?"
+
+"Leave the future to me," cried the young man, with a radiant look;
+"we love each other, and all is well."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Several months went by in perfect tranquillity. Monsieur de Solis made
+Marguerite see that her petty economies would never produce a fortune,
+and he advised her to live more at ease, by taking all that remained
+of the sum which Madame Claes had entrusted to him for the comfort and
+well-being of the household.
+
+During these months Marguerite fell a prey to the anxieties which
+beset her mother under like circumstances. However incredulous she
+might be, she had come to hope in her father's genius. By an
+inexplicable phenomenon, many people have hope when they have no
+faith. Hope is the flower of Desire, faith is the fruit of Certainty.
+Marguerite said to herself, "If my father succeeds, we shall be
+happy." Claes and Lemulquinier alone said: "We shall succeed."
+Unhappily, from day to day the Searcher's face grew sadder. Sometimes,
+when he came to dinner he dared not look at his daughter; at other
+times he glanced at her in triumph. Marguerite employed her evenings
+in making young de Solis explain to her many legal points and
+difficulties. At last her masculine education was completed; she was
+evidently preparing herself to execute the plan she had resolved upon
+if her father were again vanquished in his duel with the Unknown (X).
+
+About the beginning of July, Balthazar spend a whole day sitting on a
+bench in the garden, plunged in gloomy meditation. He gazed at the
+mound now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife's chamber; he
+shuddered, no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost
+him: his movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of
+Science. Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him for a while
+before dinner.
+
+"You have not succeeded, father?"
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Ah!" said Marguerite, in a gentle voice. "I will not say one word of
+reproach; we are both equally guilty. I only claim the fulfilment of
+your promise; it is surely sacred to you--you are a Claes. Your
+children will surround you with love and filial respect; but you now
+belong to me; you owe me obedience. Do not be uneasy; my reign will be
+gentle, and I will endeavor to bring it quickly to an end. Father, I
+am going to leave you for a month; I shall be busy with your affairs;
+for," she said, kissing him on his brow, "you are now my child. I take
+Martha with me; to-morrow Felicie will manage the household. The poor
+child is only seventeen, and she will not know how to resist you;
+therefore be generous, do not ask her for money; she has only enough
+for the barest necessaries of the household. Take courage: renounce
+your labors and your thoughts for three or four years. The great
+problem may ripen towards discovery; by that time I shall have
+gathered the money that is necessary to solve it,--and you will solve
+it. Tell me, father, your queen is clement, is she not?"
+
+"Then all is not lost?" said the old man.
+
+"No, not if you keep your word."
+
+"I will obey you, my daughter," answered Claes, with deep emotion.
+
+The next day, Monsieur Conyncks of Cambrai came to fetch his great-
+niece. He was in a travelling-carriage, and would only remain long
+enough for Marguerite and Martha to make their last arrangements.
+Monsieur Claes received his cousin with courtesy, but he was obviously
+sad and humiliated. Old Conyncks guessed his thoughts, and said with
+blunt frankness while they were breakfasting:--
+
+"I have some of your pictures, cousin; I have a taste for pictures,--a
+ruinous passion, but we all have our manias."
+
+"Dear uncle!" exclaimed Marguerite.
+
+"The world declares that you are ruined, cousin; but the treasure of a
+Claes is there," said Conyncks, tapping his forehead, "and here,"
+striking his heart; "don't you think so? I count upon you: and for
+that reason, having a few spare ducats in my wallet, I put them to use
+in your service."
+
+"Ah!" cried Balthazar, "I will repay you with treasures--"
+
+"The only treasures we possess in Flanders are patience and labor,"
+replied Conyncks, sternly. "Our ancestor has those words engraved upon
+his brow," he said, pointing to the portrait of Van Claes.
+
+Marguerite kissed her father and bade him good-bye, gave her last
+directions to Josette and to Felicie, and started with Monsieur
+Conyncks for Paris. The great-uncle was a widower with one child, a
+daughter twelve years old, and he was possessed of an immense fortune.
+It was not impossible that he would take a wife; consequently, the
+good people of Douai believed that Mademoiselle Claes would marry her
+great-uncle. The rumor of this marriage reached Pierquin, and brought
+him back in hot haste to the House of Claes.
+
+Great changes had taken place in the ideas of that clever speculator.
+For the last two years society in Douai had been divided into hostile
+camps. The nobility formed one circle, the bourgeoisie another; the
+latter naturally inimical to the former. This sudden separation took
+place, as a matter of fact, all over France, and divided the country
+into two warring nations, whose jealous squabbles, always augmenting,
+were among the chief reasons why the revolution of July, 1830, was
+accepted in the provinces. Between these social camps, the one ultra-
+monarchical, the other ultra-liberal, were a number of functionaries
+of various kinds, admitted, according to their importance, to one or
+the other of these circles, and who, at the moment of the fall of the
+legitimate power, were neutral. At the beginning of the struggle
+between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes"
+displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so
+brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the
+lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were
+unable to withstand such practice. The two societies naturally became
+exclusive.
+
+Pierquin, though rich for a provincial lawyer, was excluded from
+aristocratic circles and driven back upon the bourgeoisie. His self-
+love must have suffered from the successive rebuffs which he received
+when he felt himself insensibly set aside by people with whom he had
+rubbed shoulders up to the time of this social change. He had now
+reached his fortieth year, the last epoch at which a man who intends
+to marry can think of a young wife. The matches to which he was able
+to aspire were all among the bourgeoisie, but ambition prompted him to
+enter the upper circle by means of some creditable alliance.
+
+The isolation in which the Claes family were now living had hitherto
+kept them aloof from these social changes. Though Claes belonged to
+the old aristocracy of the province, his preoccupation of mind
+prevented him from sharing the class antipathies thus created. However
+poor a daughter of the Claes might be, she would bring to a husband
+the dower of social vanity so eagerly desired by all parvenus.
+Pierquin therefore returned to his allegiance, with the secret
+intention of making the necessary sacrifices to conclude a marriage
+which should realize all his ambitions. He kept company with Balthazar
+and Felicie during Marguerite's absence; but in so doing he
+discovered, rather late in the day, a formidable competitor in
+Emmanuel de Solis. The property of the deceased abbe was thought to be
+considerable, and to the eyes of a man who calculated all the affairs
+of life in figures, the young heir seemed more powerful through his
+money than through the seductions of the heart--as to which Pierquin
+never made himself uneasy. In his mind the abbe's fortune restored the
+de Solis name to all its pristine value. Gold and nobility of birth
+were two orbs which reflected lustre on one another and doubled the
+illumination.
+
+The sincere affection which the young professor testified for Felicie,
+whom he treated as a sister, excited Pierquin's spirit of emulation.
+He tried to eclipse Emmanuel by mingling a fashionable jargon and
+sundry expressions of superficial gallantry with anxious elegies and
+business airs which sat more naturally on his countenance. When he
+declared himself disenchanted with the world he looked at Felicie, as
+if to let her know that she alone could reconcile him with life.
+Felicie, who received for the first time in her life the compliments
+of a man, listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive;
+she took emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix
+the vague emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her
+mind. Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving
+attentions with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless
+wished to be, like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of
+a man.
+
+Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
+over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in his
+attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
+intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false
+perhaps in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake.
+Soon, little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice
+behind Emmanuel's back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a
+word a meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent
+mistakes. Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to
+discover the secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were
+really a question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all
+hope; but, notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them,
+neither Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good
+reason that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the
+reins of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as
+to her projects.
+
+The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
+difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
+making him play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present;
+during most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply
+stupid. Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three
+fortunes, a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin,
+beneath the burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than
+annihilated. This man of genius, gagged by dire necessity and
+upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of
+the most unfeeling of men. Even Pierquin could not enter without
+respect the presence of that caged lion, whose eyes, full of baffled
+power, now calmed by sadness and faded from excess of light, seemed to
+proffer a prayer for charity which the mouth dared not utter.
+Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered face, whose fires
+revived at the conception of a new experiment; then, as he looked
+about the parlor, Balthazar's eyes would fasten on the spot where his
+wife had died, a film of tears rolled like hot grains of sand across
+the arid pupils of his eyes, which thought had made immense, and his
+head fell forward on his breast. Like a Titan he had lifted the world,
+and the world fell on his breast and crushed him.
+
+This gigantic grief, so manfully controlled, affected Pierquin and
+Emmanuel powerfully, and each felt moved at times to offer this man
+the necessary money to renew his search,--so contagious are the
+convictions of genius! Both understood how it was that Madame Claes
+and Marguerite had flung their all into this gulf; but reason promptly
+checked the impulse of their hearts, and their emotion was spent in
+efforts at consolation which still further embittered the anguish of
+the doomed Titan.
+
+Claes never spoke of his eldest daughter, and showed no interest in
+her departure nor any anxiety as to her silence in not writing either
+to him or to Felicie. When de Solis or Pierquin asked for news of her
+he seemed annoyed. Did he suspect that Marguerite was working against
+him? Was he humiliated at having resigned the majestic rights of
+paternity to his own child? Had he come to love her less because she
+was now the father, he the child? Perhaps there were many of these
+reasons, many of these inexpressible feelings which float like vapors
+through the soul, in the mute disgrace which he laid upon Marguerite.
+However great may be the great men of earth, be they known or unknown,
+fortunate or unfortunate in their endeavors, all have likenesses which
+belong to human nature. By a double misfortune they suffer through
+their greatness not less than through their defects; and perhaps
+Balthazar needed to grow accustomed to the pangs of wounded vanity.
+The life he was leading, the evenings when these four persons met
+together in Marguerite's absence, were full of sadness and vague,
+uneasy apprehensions. The days were barren like a parched-up soil;
+where, nevertheless, a few flowers grew, a few rare consolations,
+though without Marguerite, the soul, the hope, the strength of the
+family, the atmosphere seemed misty.
+
+Two months went by in this way, during which Balthazar awaited the
+return of his daughter. Marguerite was brought back to Douai by her
+uncle who remained at the house instead of returning to Cambrai, no
+doubt to lend the weight of his authority to some coup d'etat planned
+by his niece. Marguerite's return was made a family fete. Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis were invited to dinner by Felicie and Balthazar.
+When the travelling-carriage stopped before the house, the four went
+to meet it with demonstrations of joy. Marguerite seemed happy to see
+her home once more, and her eyes filled with tears as she crossed the
+court-yard to reach the parlor. When embracing her father she colored
+like a guilty wife who is unable to dissimulate; but her face
+recovered its serenity as she looked at Emmanuel, from whom she seemed
+to gather strength to complete a work she had secretly undertaken.
+
+Notwithstanding the gaiety which animated all present during the
+dinner, father and daughter watched each other with distrust and
+curiosity. Balthazar asked his daughter no questions as to her stay in
+Paris, doubtless to preserve his parental dignity. Emmanuel de Solis
+imitated his reserve; but Pierquin, accustomed to be told all family
+secrets, said to Marguerite, concealing his curiosity under a show of
+liveliness:--
+
+"Well, my dear cousin, you have seen Paris and the theatres--"
+
+"I have seen little of Paris," she said; "I did not go there for
+amusement. The days went by sadly, I was so impatient to see Douai
+once more."
+
+"Yes, if I had not been angry about it she would not have gone to the
+Opera; and even there she was uneasy," said Monsieur Conyncks.
+
+It was a painful evening; every one was embarrassed and smiled vaguely
+with the artificial gaiety which hides such real anxieties. Marguerite
+and Balthazar were a prey to cruel, latent fears which reacted on the
+rest. As the hours passed, the bearing of the father and daughter grew
+more and more constrained. Sometimes Marguerite tried to smile, but
+her motions, her looks, the tones of her voice betrayed a keen
+anxiety. Messieurs Conyncks and de Solis seemed to know the meaning of
+the secret feelings which agitated the noble girl, and they appeared
+to encourage her by expressive glances. Balthazar, hurt at being kept
+from a knowledge of the steps that had been taken on his behalf,
+withdrew little by little from his children and friends, and pointedly
+kept silence. Marguerite would no doubt soon disclose what she had
+decided upon for his future.
+
+To a great man, to a father, the situation was intolerable. At his age
+a man no longer dissimulates in his own family; he became more and
+more thoughtful, serious, and grieved as the hour approached when he
+would be forced to meet his civil death. This evening covered one of
+those crises in the inner life of man which can only be expressed by
+imagery. The thunderclouds were gathering in the sky, people were
+laughing in the fields; all felt the heat and knew the storm was
+coming, but they held up their heads and continued on their way.
+Monsieur Conyncks was the first to leave the room, conducted by
+Balthazar to his chamber. During the latter's absence Pierquin and
+Monsieur de Solis went away. Marguerite bade the notary good-night
+with much affection; she said nothing to Emmanuel, but she pressed his
+hand and gave him a tearful glance. She sent Felicie away, and when
+Claes returned to the parlor he found his daughter alone.
+
+"My kind father," she said in a trembling voice, "nothing could have
+made me leave home but the serious position in which we found
+ourselves; but now, after much anxiety, after surmounting the greatest
+difficulties, I return with some chances of deliverance for all of us.
+Thanks to your name, and to my uncle's influence, and to the support
+of Monsieur de Solis, we have obtained for you an appointment under
+government as receiver of customs in Bretagne; the place is worth,
+they say, eighteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Our uncle has
+given bonds as your security. Here is the nomination," she added,
+drawing a paper from her bag. "Your life in Douai, in this house,
+during the coming years of privation and sacrifice would be
+intolerable to you. Our father must be placed in a situation at least
+equal to that in which he has always lived. I ask nothing from the
+salary you will receive from this appointment; employ it as you see
+fit. I will only beg you to remember that we have not a penny of
+income, and that we must live on what Gabriel can give us out of his.
+The town shall know nothing of our inner life. If you were still to
+live in this house you would be an obstacle to the means my sister and
+I are about to employ to restore comfort and ease to the home. Have I
+abused the authority you gave me by putting you in a position to
+remake your own fortune? In a few years, if you so will, you can
+easily become the receiver-general."
+
+"In other words, Marguerite," said Balthazar, gently, "you turn me out
+of my own house."
+
+"I do not deserve that bitter reproach," replied the daughter,
+quelling the tumultuous beatings of her heart. "You will come back to
+us in a manner becoming to your dignity. Besides, father, I have your
+promise. You are bound to obey me. My uncle has stayed here that he
+might himself accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the
+journey alone."
+
+"I shall not go," said Balthazar, rising; "I need no help from any one
+to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children."
+
+"It would be better, certainly," replied Marguerite, calmly. "But now
+I ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will
+explain in a few words. If you stay in this house your children will
+leave it, so that you may remain its master."
+
+"Marguerite!" cried Balthazar.
+
+"In that case," she said, continuing her words without taking notice
+of her father's anger, "it will be necessary to notify the minister of
+your refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative
+post, which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have
+obtained but for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into
+the glove of a lady."
+
+"My children leave me!" he exclaimed.
+
+"You must leave us or we must leave you," she said. "If I were your
+only child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my
+fate; but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with
+hunger and despair. I promised it to her who died there," she said,
+pointing to the place where her mother's bed had stood. "We have
+hidden our troubles from you; we have suffered in silence; our
+strength is gone. My father, we are not on the edge of an abyss, we
+are at the bottom of it. Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of
+it; our efforts must not be incessantly brought to nought by the
+caprices of a passion."
+
+"My dear children," cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite's hand, "I
+will help you, I will work, I--"
+
+"Here is the means," she answered, showing him the official letter.
+
+"But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me
+lose the fruits of ten years' work, and the enormous sums of money
+which my laboratory represents. There," he said, pointing towards the
+garret, "are our real resources."
+
+Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--
+
+"Father, you must choose."
+
+"Ah! my daughter, you are very hard," he replied, sitting down in an
+armchair and allowing her to leave him.
+
+The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from
+Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out. This simple
+announcement turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant
+that the old valet remarked hastily:--
+
+"Don't be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at
+eleven o'clock to breakfast. He didn't go to bed all night. At two in
+the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the
+window at the laboratory. I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him;
+he wept; he is in trouble. Here's the famous month of July when the
+sun is able to enrich us all, and if you only would--"
+
+"Enough," said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have
+assailed her father's mind.
+
+A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary
+lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on
+the places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to
+his laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were
+indispensable to him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a
+stock-gambler, to whom the public holidays are so much lost time. Here
+were his hopes; here the heavens contained the only atmosphere in
+which his lungs could breathe the breath of life. This alliance of
+places and things with men, which is so powerful in feeble natures,
+becomes almost tyrannical in men of science and students. To leave his
+house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science, to abandon the Problem,
+--it was death.
+
+Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour. The former
+scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her
+memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in
+which her father was placed. She came and went restlessly about the
+parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.
+
+At last Balthazar returned. As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite
+studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of
+stormy grief. When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid
+him good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist,
+pressed her to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,--
+
+"I have been to get my passport."
+
+The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements,
+crushed the poor girl's heart; she turned away her head to conceal her
+tears, and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to
+weep at her ease. During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness
+of a man who had come to a decision.
+
+"So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle," he said to Monsieur
+Conyncks. "I have always wished to go there."
+
+"It is a place where one can live cheaply," replied the old man.
+
+"Is our father going away?" cried Felicie.
+
+Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.
+
+"You must leave him with me to-day," said Balthazar, putting his son
+beside him. "I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-
+bye."
+
+Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
+gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
+both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile. All
+instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
+declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
+Balthazar's age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was
+firm; he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the
+tyrannous power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening
+was over, and father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who
+throughout the day had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the
+first years of his fatherhood, held out his hand and said to
+Marguerite with a tenderness that was mingled with despair,--
+
+"Are you satisfied with your father?"
+
+"You are worthy of HIM," said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
+Van Claes.
+
+The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to the
+laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
+cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
+him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
+garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at
+the various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded;
+each was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly
+ordered Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids,
+and to separate all substances which might produce explosions. While
+taking these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those
+uttered by a condemned man before going to the scaffold.
+
+"Here," he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
+a voltaic pile were dipped, "is an experiment whose results ought to
+be watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have
+driven from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their
+feet. In a combination of carbon and sulphur," he went on, speaking to
+himself, "carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
+crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
+decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--"
+
+"Ah! is that how it would be?" said Lemulquinier, contemplating his
+master with admiration.
+
+"Now here," continued Balthazar, after a pause, "the combination is
+subject to the influence of the galvanic battery, which may act--"
+
+"If monsieur wishes, I can increase its force."
+
+"No, no; leave it as it is. Perfect stillness and time are the
+conditions of crystallization--"
+
+"Confound it, it takes time enough, that crystallization," cried the
+old valet impatiently.
+
+"If the temperature goes down, the sulphide of carbon will
+crystallize," said Balthazar, continuing to give forth shreds of
+indistinct thoughts which were parts of a complete conception in his
+own mind; "but if the battery works under certain conditions of which
+I am ignorant--it must be watched carefully--it is quite possible
+that-- Ah! what am I thinking of? It is no longer a question of
+chemistry, my friend; we are to keep accounts in Bretagne."
+
+Claes rushed precipitately from the laboratory, and went downstairs to
+take a last breakfast with his family, at which Pierquin and Monsieur
+de Solis were present. Balthazar, hastening to end the agony Science
+had imposed upon him, bade his children farewell and got into the
+carriage with his uncle, all the family accompanying him to the
+threshold. There, as Marguerite strained her father to her breast with
+a despairing pressure, he whispered in her ear, "You are a good girl;
+I bear you no ill-will"; then she darted through the court-yard into
+the parlor, and flung herself on her knees upon the spot where her
+mother had died, and prayed to God to give her strength to accomplish
+the hard task that lay before her. She was already strengthened by an
+inward voice, sounding in her heart the encouragement of angels and
+the gratitude of her mother, when her sister, her brother, Emmanuel,
+and Pierquin came in, after watching the carriage until it
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"And now, mademoiselle, what do you intend to do!" said Pierquin.
+
+"Save the family," she answered simply. "We own nearly thirteen
+hundred acres at Waignies. I intend to clear them, divide them into
+three farms, put up the necessary buildings, and then let them. I
+believe that in a few years, with patience and great economy, each of
+us," motioning to her sister and brother, "will have a farm of over
+four-hundred acres, which may bring in, some day, a rental of nearly
+fifteen thousand francs. My brother Gabriel will have this house, and
+all that now stands in his name on the Grand-Livre, for his portion.
+We shall then be able to redeem our father's property and return it to
+him free from all encumbrance, by devoting our incomes, each of us, to
+paying off his debts."
+
+"But, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, amazed at Marguerite's
+understanding of business and her cool judgment, "you will need at
+least two hundred thousand francs to clear the land, build your
+houses, and purchase cattle. Where will you get such a sum?"
+
+"That is where my difficulties begin," she said, looking alternately
+at Pierquin and de Solis; "I cannot ask it from my uncle, who has
+already spent much money for us and has given bonds as my father's
+security."
+
+"You have friends!" cried Pierquin, suddenly perceiving that the
+demoiselles Claes were "four-hundred-thousand-franc girls," after all.
+
+Emmanuel de Solis looked tenderly at Marguerite. Pierquin,
+unfortunately for himself, was a notary still, even in the midst of
+his enthusiasm, and he promptly added,--
+
+"I will lend you these two hundred thousand francs."
+
+Marguerite and Emmanuel consulted each other with a glance which was a
+flash of light to Pierquin; Felicie colored highly, much gratified to
+find her cousin as generous as she desired him to be. She looked at
+her sister, who suddenly guessed the fact that during her absence the
+poor girl had allowed herself to be caught by Pierquin's meaningless
+gallantries.
+
+"You shall only pay me five per cent interest," went on the lawyer,
+"and refund the money whenever it is convenient to do so; I will take
+a mortgage on your property. And don't be uneasy; you shall only have
+the outlay on your improvements to pay; I will find you trustworthy
+farmers, and do all your business gratuitously, so as to help you like
+a good relation."
+
+Emmanuel made Marguerite a sign to refuse the offer, but she was too
+much occupied in studying the changes of her sister's face to perceive
+it. After a slight pause, she looked at the notary with an amused
+smile, and answered of her own accord, to the great joy of Monsieur de
+Solis:--
+
+"You are indeed a good relation,--I expected nothing less of you; but
+an interest of five per cent would delay our release too long. I shall
+wait till my brother is of age, and then we will sell out what he has
+in the Funds."
+
+Pierquin bit his lip. Emmanuel smiled quietly.
+
+"Felicie, my dear child, take Jean back to school; Martha will go with
+you," said Marguerite to her sister. "Jean, my angel, be a good boy;
+don't tear your clothes, for we shall not be rich enough to buy you as
+many new ones as we did. Good-bye, little one; study hard."
+
+Felicie carried off her brother.
+
+"Cousin," said Marguerite to Pierquin, "and you, monsieur," she said
+to Monsieur de Solis, "I know you have been to see my father during my
+absence, and I thank you for that proof of friendship. You will not do
+less I am sure for two poor girls who will be in need of counsel. Let
+us understand each other. When I am at home I shall receive you both
+with the greatest of pleasure, but when Felicie is here alone with
+Josette and Martha, I need not tell you that she ought to see no one,
+not even an old friend or the most devoted of relatives. Under the
+circumstances in which we are placed, our conduct must be
+irreproachable. We are vowed to toil and solitude for a long, long
+time."
+
+There was silence for some minutes. Emmanuel, absorbed in
+contemplation of Marguerite's head, seemed dumb. Pierquin did not know
+what to say. He took leave of his cousin with feelings of rage against
+himself; for he suddenly perceived that Marguerite loved Emmanuel, and
+that he, Pierquin, had just behaved like a fool.
+
+"Pierquin, my friend," he said, apostrophizing himself in the street,
+"if a man said you were an idiot he would tell the truth. What a fool
+I am! I've got twelve thousand francs a year outside of my business,
+without counting what I am to inherit from my uncle des Racquets,
+which is likely to double my fortune (not that I wish him dead, he is
+so economical), and I've had the madness to ask interest from
+Mademoiselle Claes! I know those two are jeering at me now! I mustn't
+think of Marguerite any more. No. After all, Felicie is a sweet,
+gentle little creature, who will suit me much better. Marguerite's
+character is iron; she would want to rule me--and--she would rule me.
+Come, come, let's be generous; I wish I was not so much of a lawyer:
+am I never to get that harness off my back? Bless my soul! I'll begin
+to fall in love with Felicie, and I won't budge from that sentiment.
+She will have a farm of four hundred and thirty acres, which, sooner
+or later, will be worth twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year, for
+the soil about Waignies is excellent. Just let my old uncle des
+Racquets die, poor dear man, and I'll sell my practice and be a man of
+leisure, with fifty--thou--sand--francs--a--year. My wife is a Claes,
+I'm allied to the great families. The deuce! we'll see if those
+Courtevilles and Magalhens and Savaron de Savarus will refuse to come
+and dine with a Pierquin-Claes-Molina-Nourho. I shall be mayor of
+Douai; I'll obtain the cross, and get to be deputy--in short,
+everything. Ha, ha! Pierquin, my boy, now keep yourself in hand; no
+more nonsense, because--yes, on my word of honor--Felicie--
+Mademoiselle Felicie Van Claes--loves you!"
+
+When the lovers were left alone Emmanuel held out his hand to
+Marguerite, who did not refuse to put her right hand into it. They
+rose with one impulse and moved towards their bench in the garden; but
+as they reached the middle of the parlor, the lover could not resist
+his joy, and, in a voice that trembled with emotion, he said,--
+
+"I have three hundred thousand francs of yours."
+
+"What!" she cried, "did my poor mother entrust them to you? No? then
+where did you get them?"
+
+"Oh, my Marguerite! all that is mine is yours. Was it not you who
+first said the word 'ourselves'?"
+
+"Dear Emmanuel!" she exclaimed, pressing the hand which still held
+hers; and then, instead of going into the garden, she threw herself
+into a low chair.
+
+"It is for me to thank you," he said, with the voice of love, "since
+you accept all."
+
+"Oh, my dear beloved one," she cried, "this moment effaces many a
+grief and brings the happy future nearer. Yes, I accept your fortune,"
+she continued, with the smile of an angel upon her lips, "I know the
+way to make it mine."
+
+She looked up at the picture of Van Claes as if calling him to
+witness. The young man's eyes followed those of Marguerite, and he did
+not notice that she took a ring from her finger until he heard the
+words:--
+
+"From the depths of our greatest misery one comfort rises. My father's
+indifference leaves me the free disposal of myself," she said, holding
+out the ring. "Take it, Emmanuel. My mother valued you--she would have
+chosen you."
+
+The young man turned pale with emotion and fell on his knees beside
+her, offering in return a ring which he always wore.
+
+"This is my mother's wedding-ring," he said, kissing it. "My
+Marguerite, am I to have no other pledge than this?"
+
+She stooped a little till her forehead met his lips.
+
+"Alas, dear love," she said, greatly agitated, "are we not doing
+wrong? We have so long to wait!"
+
+"My uncle used to say that adoration was the daily bread of patience,
+--he spoke of Christians who love God. That is how I love you; I have
+long mingled my love for you with my love for Him. I am yours as I am
+His."
+
+They remained for a few moments in the power of this sweet enthusiasm.
+It was the calm, sincere effusion of a feeling which, like an
+overflowing spring, poured forth its superabundance in little
+wavelets. The events which separated these lovers produced a
+melancholy which only made their happiness the keener, giving it a
+sense of something sharp, like pain.
+
+Felicie came back too soon. Emmanuel, inspired by that delightful tact
+of love which discerns all feelings, left the sisters alone,--
+exchanging a look with Marguerite to let her know how much this
+discretion cost him, how hungry his soul was for that happiness so
+long desired, which had just been consecrated by the betrothal of
+their hearts.
+
+"Come here, little sister," said Marguerite, taking Felicie round the
+neck. Then, passing into the garden they sat down on the bench where
+generation after generation had confided to listening hearts their
+words of love, their sighs of grief, their meditations and their
+projects. In spite of her sister's joyous tone and lively manner,
+Felicie experienced a sensation that was very like fear. Marguerite
+took her hand and felt it tremble.
+
+"Mademoiselle Felicie," said the elder, with her lips at her sister's
+ear. "I read your soul. Pierquin has been here often in my absence,
+and he has said sweet words to you, and you have listened to them."
+Felicie blushed. "Don't defend yourself, my angel," continued
+Marguerite, "it is so natural to love! Perhaps your dear nature will
+improve his; he is egotistical and self-interested, but for all that
+he is a good man, and his defects may even add to your happiness. He
+will love you as the best of his possessions; you will be a part of
+his business affairs. Forgive me this one word, dear love; you will
+soon correct the bad habit he has acquired of seeing money in
+everything, by teaching him the business of the heart."
+
+Felicie could only kiss her sister.
+
+"Besides," added Marguerite, "he has property; and his family belongs
+to the highest and the oldest bourgeoisie. But you don't think I would
+oppose your happiness even if the conditions were less prosperous, do
+you?"
+
+Felicie let fall the words, "Dear sister."
+
+"Yes, you may confide in me," cried Marguerite, "sisters can surely
+tell each other their secrets."
+
+These words, so full of heartiness, opened the way to one of those
+delightful conversations in which young girls tell all. When
+Marguerite, expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state
+of Felicie's heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--
+
+"Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--"
+
+"Ah!" cried Felicie, laughing, "leave me to my own devices; I have a
+model before my eyes."
+
+"Saucy child!" exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.
+
+Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as
+the accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting
+property, and though he was indifferent to which sister he should
+marry so long as both had the same name and the same dower, he did
+perceive that the two were, to use his own expression, "romantic and
+sentimental girls," adjectives employed by commonplace people to
+ridicule the gifts which Nature sows with grudging hand along the
+furrows of humanity. The lawyer no doubt said to himself that he had
+better swim with the stream; and accordingly the next day he came to
+see Marguerite, and took her mysteriously into the little garden,
+where he began to talk sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of
+the primal contract which, according to social usage, must precede the
+notarial contract.
+
+"Dear cousin," he said, "you and I have not always been of one mind as
+to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
+you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
+desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
+fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
+me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
+have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
+that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
+successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
+that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
+brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
+take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
+service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at
+one quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all
+I ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
+good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
+wife happy."
+
+"This is all satisfactory, cousin," answered Marguerite; "but my
+sister's choice depends upon herself and also on my father's will."
+
+"I know that, my dear cousin," said the lawyer, "but you are the
+mother of the whole family; and I have nothing more at heart than that
+you should judge me rightly."
+
+This conversation paints the mind of the honest notary. Later in life,
+Pierquin became celebrated by his reply to the commanding officer at
+Saint-Omer, who had invited him to be present at a military fete; the
+note ran as follows: "Monsieur Pierquin-Claes de Molina-Nourho, mayor
+of the city of Douai, chevalier of the Legion of honor, will have THAT
+of being present, etc."
+
+Marguerite accepted the lawyer's offer only so far as it related to
+his professional services, so that she might not in any degree
+compromise either her own dignity as a woman, or her sister's future,
+or her father's authority.
+
+The next day she confided Felicie to the care of Martha and Josette
+(who vowed themselves body and soul to their young mistress, and
+seconded all her economies), and started herself for Waignies, where
+she began operations, which were judiciously overlooked and directed
+by Pierquin. Devotion was now set down as a good speculation in the
+mind of that worthy man; his care and trouble were in fact an
+investment, and he had no wish to be niggardly in making it. First he
+contrived to save Marguerite the trouble of clearing the land and
+working the ground intended for the farms. He found three young men,
+sons of rich farmers, who were anxious to settle themselves in life,
+and he succeeded, through the prospect he held out to them of the
+fertility of the land, in making them take leases of the three farms
+on which the buildings were to be constructed. To gain possession of
+the farms rent-free for three years the tenants bound themselves to
+pay ten thousand francs a year the fourth year, twelve thousand the
+sixth year, and fifteen thousand for the remainder of the term; to
+drain the land, make the plantations, and purchase the cattle. While
+the buildings were being put up the farmers were to clear the land.
+
+Four years after Balthazar Claes's departure from his home Marguerite
+had almost recovered the property of her brothers and sister. Two
+hundred thousand francs, lent to her by Emmanuel, had sufficed to put
+up the farm buildings. Neither help nor counsel was withheld from the
+brave girl, whose conduct excited the admiration of the whole town.
+Marguerite superintended the buildings, and looked after her contracts
+and leases with the good sense, activity, and perseverance, which
+women know so well how to call up when they are actuated by a strong
+sentiment. By the fifth year she was able to apply thirty thousand
+francs from the rental of the farms, together with the income from the
+Funds standing in her brother's name, and the proceeds of her father's
+property, towards paying off the mortgages on that property, and
+repairing the devastation which her father's passion had wrought in
+the old mansion of the Claes. This redemption went on more rapidly as
+the interest account decreased. Emmanuel de Solis persuaded Marguerite
+to take the remaining one hundred thousand francs of his uncle's
+bequest, and by joining to it twenty thousand francs of his own
+savings, pay off in the third year of her management a large slice of
+the debts. This life of courage, privation, and endurance was never
+relaxed for five years; but all went well,--everything prospered under
+the administration and influence of Marguerite Claes.
+
+Gabriel, now holding an appointment under government as engineer in
+the department of Roads and Bridges, made a rapid fortune, aided by
+his great-uncle, in a canal which he was able to construct; moreover,
+he succeeded in pleasing his cousin Mademoiselle Conyncks, the idol of
+her father, and one of the richest heiresses in Flanders. In 1824 the
+whole Claes property was free, and the house in the rue de Paris had
+repaired its losses. Pierquin made a formal application to Balthazar
+for the hand of Felicie, and Monsieur de Solis did the same for that
+of Marguerite.
+
+At the beginning of January, 1825, Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks
+left Douai to bring home the exiled father, whose return was eagerly
+desired by all, and who had sent in his resignation that he might
+return to his family and crown their happiness by his presence.
+Marguerite had often expressed a regret at not being able to replace
+the pictures which had formerly adorned the gallery and the reception-
+rooms, before the day when her father would return as master of his
+house. In her absence Pierquin and Monsieur de Solis plotted with
+Felicie to prepare a surprise which should make the younger sister a
+sharer in the restoration of the House of Claes. The two bought a
+number of fine pictures, which they presented to Felicie to decorate
+the gallery. Monsieur Conyncks had thought of the same thing. Wishing
+to testify to Marguerite the satisfaction he had taken in her noble
+conduct and in the self-devotion with which she had fulfilled her
+mother's dying mandate, he arranged that fifty of his fine pictures,
+among them several of those which Balthazar had formerly sold, should
+be brought to Douai in Marguerite's absence, so that the Claes gallery
+might once more be complete.
+
+During the years that had elapsed since Balthazar Claes left his home,
+Marguerite had visited her father several times, accompanied by her
+sister or by Jean. Each time she had found him more and more changed;
+but since her last visit old age had come upon Balthazar with alarming
+symptoms, the gravity of which was much increased by the parsimony
+with which he lived that he might spend the greater part of his salary
+in experiments the results of which forever disappointed him. Though
+he was only sixty-five years of age, he appeared to be eighty. His
+eyes were sunken in their orbits, his eyebrows had whitened, only a
+few hairs remained as a fringe around his skull; he allowed his beard
+to grow, and cut it off with scissors when its length annoyed him; he
+was bent like a field-laborer, and the condition of his clothes had
+reached a degree of wretchedness which his decrepitude now rendered
+hideous. Thought still animated that noble face, whose features were
+scarcely discernible under its wrinkles; but the fixity of the eyes, a
+certain desperation of manner, a restless uneasiness, were all
+diagnostics of insanity, or rather of many forms of insanity.
+Sometimes a flash of hope gave him the look of a monomaniac; at other
+times impatient anger at not seizing a secret which flitted before his
+eyes like a will o' the wisp brought symptoms of madness into his
+face; or sudden bursts of maniacal laughter betrayed his
+irrationality: but during the greater part of the time, he was sunk in
+a state of complete depression which combined all the phases of
+insanity in the cold melancholy of an idiot. However fleeting and
+imperceptible these symptoms may have been to the eye of strangers,
+they were, unfortunately, only too plain to those who had known
+Balthazar Claes sublime in goodness, noble in heart, stately in
+person,--a Claes of whom, alas, scarcely a vestige now remained.
+
+Lemulquinier, grown old and wasted like his master with incessant
+toil, had not, like him, been subjected to the ravages of thought. The
+expression of the old valet's face showed a singular mixture of
+anxiety and admiration for his master which might easily have misled
+an onlooker. Though he listened to Balthazar's words with respect, and
+followed his every movement with tender solicitude, he took charge of
+the servant of science very much as a mother takes care of her child,
+and even seemed to protect him, because in the vulgar details of life,
+to which Balthazar gave no thought, he actually did protect him. These
+old men, wrapped in one idea, confident of the reality of their hope,
+stirred by the same breath, the one representing the shell, the other
+the soul of their mutual existence, formed a spectacle at once tender
+and distressing.
+
+When Marguerite and Monsieur Conyncks arrived, they found Claes living
+at an inn. His successor had not been kept waiting, and was already in
+possession of his office.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Through all the preoccupations of science, the desire to see his
+native town, his house, his family, agitated Balthazar's mind. His
+daughter's letters had told him of the happy family events; he dreamed
+of crowning his career by a series of experiments that must lead to
+the solution of the great Problem, and he awaited Marguerite's arrival
+with extreme impatience.
+
+The daughter threw herself into her father's arms and wept for joy.
+This time she came to seek a recompense for years of pain, and pardon
+for the exercise of her domestic authority. She seemed to herself
+criminal, like those great men who violate the liberties of the people
+for the safety of the nation. But she shuddered as she now
+contemplated her father and saw the change which had taken place in
+him since her last visit. Monsieur Conyncks shared the secret alarm of
+his niece, and insisted on taking Balthazar as soon as possible to
+Douai, where the influence of his native place might restore him to
+health and reason amid the happiness of a recovered domestic life.
+
+After the first transports of the heart were over,--which were far
+warmer on Balthazar's part than Marguerite had expected,--he showed a
+singular state of feeling towards his daughter. He expressed regret at
+receiving her in a miserable inn, inquired her tastes and wishes, and
+asked what she would have to eat, with the eagerness of a lover; his
+manner was even that of a culprit seeking to propitiate a judge.
+
+Marguerite knew her father so well that she guessed the motive of this
+solicitude; she felt sure he had contracted debts in the town which he
+wished to pay before his departure. She observed him carefully for a
+time, and saw the human heart in all its nakedness. Balthazar had
+dwindled from his true self. The consciousness of his abasement, and
+the isolation of his life in the pursuit of science made him timid and
+childish in all matters not connected with his favorite occupations.
+His daughter awed him; the remembrance of her past devotion, of the
+energy she had displayed, of the powers he had allowed her to take
+away from him, of the wealth now at her command, and the indefinable
+feelings that had preyed upon him ever since the day when he had
+abdicated a paternity he had long neglected,--all these things
+affected his mind towards her, and increased her importance in his
+eyes. Conyncks was nothing to him beside Marguerite; he saw only his
+daughter, he thought only of her, and seemed to fear her, as certain
+weak husbands fear a superior woman who rules them. When he raised his
+eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with distress an expression
+of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault. The noble girl was
+unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible expression of that bald
+head, denuded by science and by toil, with the puerile smile, the
+eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance of the old man.
+She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that littleness,
+and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her father's sense
+of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to reappear in the
+bosom of his family. Her first step when they were alone was to ask
+him,--
+
+"Do you owe anything here?"
+
+Balthazar colored, and replied with an embarrassed air:--
+
+"I don't know, but Lemulquinier can tell you. That worthy fellow knows
+more about my affairs than I do myself."
+
+Marguerite rang for the valet: when he came she studied, almost
+involuntarily, the faces of the two old men.
+
+"What does monsieur want?" asked Lemulquinier.
+
+Marguerite, who was all pride and dignity, felt an oppression at her
+heart as she perceived from the tone and manner of the servant that
+some mortifying familiarity had grown up between her father and the
+companion of his labors.
+
+"My father cannot make out the account of what he owes in this place
+without you," she said.
+
+"Monsieur," began Lemulquinier, "owes--"
+
+At these words Balthazar made a sign to his valet which Marguerite
+intercepted; it humiliated her.
+
+"Tell me all that my father owes," she said.
+
+"Monsieur owes, here, about three thousand francs to an apothecary who
+is a wholesale dealer in drugs; he has supplied us with pearl-ash and
+lead, and zinc and the reagents--"
+
+"Is that all?" asked Marguerite.
+
+Again Balthazar made a sign to Lemulquinier, who replied, as if under
+a spell,--
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle."
+
+"Very good," she said, "I will give them to you."
+
+Balthazar kissed her joyously and said,--
+
+"You are an angel, my child."
+
+He breathed at his ease and glanced at her with eyes that were less
+sad; and yet, in spite of this apparent joy, Marguerite easily
+detected the signs of deep anxiety upon his face, and felt certain
+that the three thousand francs represented only the pressing debts of
+his laboratory.
+
+"Be frank with me, father," she said, letting him seat her on his
+knee; "you owe more than that. Tell me all, and come back to your home
+without an element of fear in the midst of the general joy."
+
+"My dear Marguerite," he said, taking her hands and kissing them with
+a grace that seemed a memory of her youth, "you would scold me--"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Truly?" he asked, giving way to childish expressions of delight. "Can
+I tell you all? will you pay--"
+
+"Yes," she said, repressing the tears which came into her eyes.
+
+"Well, I owe--oh! I dare not--"
+
+"Tell me, father."
+
+"It is a great deal."
+
+She clasped her hands, with a gesture of despair.
+
+"I owe thirty thousand francs to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville."
+
+"Thirty thousand francs," she said, "is just the sum I have laid by. I
+am glad to give it to you," she added, respectfully kissing his brow.
+
+He rose, took his daughter in his arms, and whirled about the room,
+dancing her as though she were an infant; then he placed her in the
+chair where she had been sitting, and exclaimed:--
+
+"My darling child! my treasure of love! I was half-dead: the
+Chiffrevilles have written me three threatening letters; they were
+about to sue me,--me, who would have made their fortune!"
+
+"Father," said Marguerite in accents of despair, "are you still
+searching?"
+
+"Yes, still searching," he said, with the smile of a madman, "and I
+shall FIND. If you could only understand the point we have reached--"
+
+"We? who are we?"
+
+"I mean Mulquinier: he has understood me, he loves me. Poor fellow! he
+is devoted to me."
+
+Conyncks entered at the moment and interrupted the conversation.
+Marguerite made a sign to her father to say no more, fearing lest he
+should lower himself in her uncle's eyes. She was frightened at the
+ravages thought had made in that noble mind, absorbed in searching for
+the solution of a problem that was perhaps insoluble. Balthazar, who
+saw and knew nothing outside of his furnaces, seemed not to realize
+the liberation of his fortune.
+
+On the morrow they started for Flanders. During the journey Marguerite
+gained some confused light upon the position in which Lemulquinier and
+her father stood to each other. The valet had acquired an ascendancy
+over his master such as common men without education are able to
+obtain over great minds to whom they feel themselves necessary; such
+men, taking advantage of concession after concession, aim at complete
+dominion with the persistency that comes of a fixed idea. In this case
+the master had contracted for the man the sort of affection that grows
+out of habit, like that of a workman for his creative tool, or an Arab
+for the horse that gives him freedom. Marguerite studied the signs of
+this tyranny, resolving to withdraw her father from its humiliating
+yoke if it were real.
+
+They stopped several days in Paris on the way home, to enable
+Marguerite to pay off her father's debts and request the manufacturers
+of chemical products to send nothing to Douai without first informing
+her of any orders given by Claes. She persuaded her father to change
+his style of dress and buy clothes that were suitable to a man of his
+station. This corporal restoration gave Balthazar a certain physical
+dignity which augured well for a change in his ideas; and Marguerite,
+joyous in the thought of all the surprises that awaited her father
+when he entered his own house, started for Douai.
+
+Nine miles from the town Balthazar was met by Felicie on horseback,
+escorted by her two brothers, Emmanuel, Pierquin, and some of the
+nearest friends of the three families. The journey had necessarily
+diverted the chemist's mind from its habitual thoughts; the aspect of
+his own Flanders acted on his heart; when, therefore, he saw the
+joyous company of his family and friends gathering about him his
+emotion was so keen that the tears came to his eyes, his voice
+trembled, his eyelids reddened, and he held his children in so
+passionate an embrace, seeming unable to release them, that the
+spectators of the scene were moved to tears.
+
+When at last he saw the House of Claes he turned pale, and sprang from
+the carriage with the agility of a young man; he breathed the air of
+the court-yard with delight, and looked about him at the smallest
+details with a pleasure that could express itself only in gestures: he
+drew himself erect, and his whole countenance renewed its youth. The
+tears came into his eyes when he entered the parlor and noticed the
+care with which his daughter had replaced the old silver candelabra
+that he formerly had sold,--a visible sign that all the other
+disasters had been repaired. Breakfast was served in the dining-room,
+whose sideboards and shelves were covered with curios and silver-ware
+not less valuable than the treasures that formerly stood there. Though
+the family meal lasted a long time, it was still too short for the
+narratives which Balthazar exacted from each of his children. The
+reaction of his moral being caused by this return to his home wedded
+him once more to family happiness, and he was again a father. His
+manners recovered their former dignity. At first the delight of
+recovering possession kept him from dwelling on the means by which the
+recovery had been brought about. His joy therefore was full and
+unalloyed.
+
+Breakfast over, the four children, the father and Pierquin went into
+the parlor, where Balthazar saw with some uneasiness a number of legal
+papers which the notary's clerk had laid upon a table, by which he was
+standing as if to assist his chief. The children all sat down, and
+Balthazar, astonished, remained standing before the fireplace.
+
+"This," said Pierquin, "is the guardianship account which Monsieur
+Claes renders to his children. It is not very amusing," he added,
+laughing after the manner of notaries who generally assume a lively
+tone in speaking of serious matters, "but I must really oblige you to
+listen to it."
+
+Though the phrase was natural enough under the circumstances, Monsieur
+Claes, whose conscience recalled his past life, felt it to be a
+reproach, and his brow clouded.
+
+The clerk began the reading. Balthazar's amazement increased as little
+by little the statement unfolded the facts. In the first place, the
+fortune of his wife at the time of her decease was declared to have
+been sixteen hundred thousand francs or thereabouts; and the summing
+up of the account showed clearly that the portion of each child was
+intact and as well-invested as if the best and wisest father had
+controlled it. In consequence of this the House of Claes was free from
+all lien, Balthazar was master of it; moreover, his rural property was
+likewise released from encumbrance. When all the papers connected with
+these matters were signed, Pierquin presented the receipts for the
+repayment of the moneys formerly borrowed, and releases of the various
+liens on the estates.
+
+Balthazar, conscious that he had recovered the honor of his manhood,
+the life of a father, the dignity of a citizen, fell into a chair, and
+looked about for Marguerite; but she, with the distinctive delicacy of
+her sex, had left the room during the reading of the papers, as if to
+see that all the arrangements for the fete were properly prepared.
+Each member of the family understood the old man's wish when the
+failing humid eyes sought for the daughter,--who was seen by all
+present, with the eyes of the soul, as an angel of strength and light
+within the house. Gabriel went to find her. Hearing her step,
+Balthazar ran to clasp her in his arms.
+
+"Father," she said, at the foot of the stairs, where the old man
+caught her and strained her to his breast, "I implore you not to
+lessen your sacred authority. Thank me before the family for carrying
+out your wishes, and be the sole author of the good that has been done
+here."
+
+Balthazar lifted his eyes to heaven, then looked at his daughter,
+folded his arms, and said, after a pause, during which his face
+recovered an expression his children had not seen upon it for ten long
+years,--
+
+"Pepita, why are you not here to praise our child!"
+
+He strained Marguerite to him, unable to utter another word, and went
+back to the parlor.
+
+"My children," he said, with the nobility of demeanor that in former
+days had made him so imposing, "we all owe gratitude and thanks to my
+daughter Marguerite for the wisdom and courage with which she has
+fulfilled my intentions and carried out my plans, when I, too absorbed
+by my labors, gave the reins of our domestic government into her
+hands."
+
+"Ah, now!" cried Pierquin, looking at the clock, "we must read the
+marriage contracts. But they are not my affair, for the law forbids me
+to draw up such deeds between my relations and myself. Monsieur
+Raparlier is coming."
+
+The friends of the family, invited to the dinner given to celebrate
+Claes's return and the signing of the marriage contracts, now began to
+arrive; and their servants brought in the wedding-presents. The
+company quickly assembled, and the scene was imposing as much from the
+quality of the persons present as from the elegance of the toilettes.
+The three families, thus united through the happiness of their
+children, seemed to vie with each other in contributing to the
+splendor of the occasion. The parlor was soon filled with the charming
+gifts that are made to bridal couples. Gold shimmered and glistened;
+silks and satins, cashmere shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much
+delight to those who gave as to those who received; enjoyment that was
+almost childlike shone on every face, and the mere value of the
+magnificent presents was lost sight of by the spectators,--who often
+busy themselves in estimating it out of curiosity.
+
+The ceremonial forms used for generations in the Claes family for
+solemnities of this nature now began. The parents alone were seated,
+all present stood before them at a little distance. To the left of the
+parlor on the garden side were Gabriel and Mademoiselle Conyncks, next
+to them stood Monsieur de Solis and Marguerite, and farther on,
+Felicie and Pierquin. Balthazar and Monsieur Conyncks, the only
+persons who were seated, occupied two armchairs beside the notary who,
+for this occasion, had taken Pierquin's duty. Jean stood behind his
+father. A score of ladies elegantly dressed, and a few men chosen from
+among the nearest relatives of the Pierquins, the Conyncks, and the
+Claes, the mayor of Douai, who was to marry the couples, the twelve
+witnesses chosen from among the nearest friends of the three families,
+all, even the curate of Saint-Pierre, remained standing and formed an
+imposing circle at the end of the parlor next the court-yard. This
+homage paid by the whole assembly to Paternity, which at such a moment
+shines with almost regal majesty, gave to the scene a certain antique
+character. It was the only moment for sixteen long years when
+Balthazar forgot the Alkahest.
+
+Monsieur Raparlier went up to Marguerite and her sister and asked if
+all the persons invited to the ceremony and to the dinner had arrived;
+on receiving an affirmative reply, he returned to his station and took
+up the marriage contract between Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis,
+which was the first to be read, when suddenly the door of the parlor
+opened and Lemulquinier entered, his face flaming.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" he cried.
+
+Balthazar flung a look of despair at Marguerite, then, making her a
+sign, he drew her into the garden. The whole assembly were conscious
+of a shock.
+
+"I dared not tell you, my child," said the father, "but since you have
+done so much, you will save me, I know, from this last trouble.
+Lemulquinier lent me all his savings--the fruit of twenty years'
+economy--for my last experiment, which failed. He has come no doubt,
+finding that I am once more rich, to insist on having them back. Ah!
+my angel, give them to him; you owe him your father; he alone consoled
+me in my troubles, he alone has had faith in me,--without him I should
+have died."
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur!" cried Lemulquinier.
+
+"What is it?" said Balthazar, turning round.
+
+"A diamond!"
+
+Claes sprang into the parlor and saw the stone in the hands of the old
+valet, who whispered in his ear,--
+
+"I have been to the laboratory."
+
+The chemist, forgetting everything about him, cast a terrible look on
+the old Fleming which meant, "You went before me to the laboratory!"
+
+"Yes," continued Lemulquinier, "I found the diamond in the china
+capsule which communicated with the battery which we left to work,
+monsieur--and see!" he added, showing a white diamond of octahedral
+form, whose brilliancy drew the astonished gaze of all present.
+
+"My children, my friends," said Balthazar, "forgive my old servant,
+forgive me! This event will drive me mad. The chance work of seven
+years has produced--without me--a discovery I have sought for sixteen
+years. How? My God, I know not--yes, I left sulphide of carbon under
+the influence of a Voltaic pile, whose action ought to have been
+watched from day to day. During my absence the power of God has worked
+in my laboratory, but I was not there to note its progressive effects!
+Is it not awful? Oh, cursed exile! cursed chance! Alas! had I watched
+that slow, that sudden--what can I call it?--crystallization,
+transformation, in short that miracle, then, then my children would
+have been richer still. Though this result is not the solution of the
+Problem which I seek, the first rays of my glory would have shone from
+that diamond upon my native country, and this hour, which our
+satisfied affections have made so happy, would have glowed with the
+sunlight of Science."
+
+Every one kept silence in the presence of such a man. The disconnected
+words wrung from him by his anguish were too sincere not to be
+sublime.
+
+Suddenly, Balthazar drove back his despair into the depths of his own
+being, and cast upon the assembly a majestic look which affected the
+souls of all; he took the diamond and offered it to Marguerite,
+saying,--
+
+"It is thine, my angel."
+
+Then he dismissed Lemulquinier with a gesture, and motioned to the
+notary, saying, "Go on."
+
+The two words sent a shudder of emotion through the company such as
+Talma in certain roles produced among his auditors. Balthazar, as he
+reseated himself, said in a low voice,--
+
+"To-day I must be a father only."
+
+Marguerite hearing the words went up to him and caught his hand and
+kissed it respectfully.
+
+"No man was ever greater," said Emmanuel, when his bride returned to
+him; "no man was ever so mighty; another would have gone mad."
+
+After the three contracts were read and signed, the company hastened
+to question Balthazar as to the manner in which the diamond had been
+formed; but he could tell them nothing about so strange an accident.
+He looked through the window at his garret and pointed to it with an
+angry gesture.
+
+"Yes, the awful power resulting from a movement of fiery matter which
+no doubt produces metals, diamonds," he said, "was manifested there
+for one moment, by one chance."
+
+"That chance was of course some natural effect," whispered a guest
+belonging to the class of people who are ready with an explanation of
+everything. "At any rate, it is something saved out of all he has
+wasted."
+
+"Let us forget it," said Balthazar, addressing his friends; "I beg you
+to say no more about it to-day."
+
+Marguerite took her father's arm to lead the way to the reception-
+rooms of the front house, where a sumptuous fete had been prepared. As
+he entered the gallery, followed by his guests, he beheld it filled
+with pictures and garnished with choice flowers.
+
+"Pictures!" he exclaimed, "pictures!--and some of the old ones!"
+
+He stopped short; his brow clouded; for a moment grief overcame him;
+he felt the weight of his wrong-doing as the vista of his humiliation
+came before his eyes.
+
+"It is all your own, father," said Marguerite, guessing the feelings
+that oppressed his soul.
+
+"Angel, whom the spirits in heaven watch and praise," he cried, "how
+many times have you given life to your father?"
+
+"Then keep no cloud upon your brow, nor the least sad thought in your
+heart," she said, "and you will reward me beyond my hopes. I have been
+thinking of Lemulquinier, my darling father; the few words you said a
+little while ago have made me value him; perhaps I have been unjust to
+him; he ought to remain your humble friend. Emmanuel has laid by
+nearly sixty thousand francs which he has economized, and we will give
+them to Lemulquinier. After serving you so well the man ought to be
+made comfortable for his remaining years. Do not be uneasy about us.
+Monsieur de Solis and I intend to lead a quiet, peaceful life,--a life
+without luxury; we can well afford to lend you that money until you
+are able to return it."
+
+"Ah, my daughter! never forsake me; continue to be thy father's
+providence."
+
+When they entered the reception-rooms Balthazar found them restored
+and furnished as elegantly as in former days. The guests presently
+descended to the dining-room on the ground-floor by the grand
+staircase, on every step of which were rare plants and flowering
+shrubs. A silver service of exquisite workmanship, the gift of Gabriel
+to his father, attracted all eyes to a luxury which was surprising to
+the inhabitants of a town where such luxury is traditional. The
+servants of Monsieur Conyncks and of Pierquin, as well as those of the
+Claes household, were assembled to serve the repast. Seeing himself
+once more at the head of that table, surrounded by friends and
+relatives and happy faces beaming with heartfelt joy, Balthazar,
+behind whose chair stood Lemulquinier, was overcome by emotions so
+deep and so imposing that all present kept silence, as men are silent
+before great sorrows or great joys.
+
+"Dear children," he cried, "you have killed the fatted calf to welcome
+home the prodigal father."
+
+These words, in which the father judged himself (and perhaps prevented
+others from judging him more severely), were spoken so nobly that all
+present shed tears; they were the last expression of sadness, however,
+and the general happiness soon took on the merry, animated character
+of a family fete.
+
+Immediately after dinner the principal people of the city began to
+arrive for the ball, which proved worthy of the almost classic
+splendor of the restored House of Claes. The three marriages followed
+this happy day, and gave occasion to many fetes, and balls, and
+dinners, which involved Balthazar for some months in the vortex of
+social life. His eldest son and his wife removed to an estate near
+Cambrai belonging to Monsieur Conyncks, who was unwilling to separate
+from his daughter. Madame Pierquin also left her father's house to do
+the honors of a fine mansion which Pierquin had built, and where he
+desired to live in all the dignity of rank; for his practise was sold,
+and his uncle des Racquets had died and left him a large property
+scraped together by slow economy. Jean went to Paris to finish his
+education, and Monsieur and Madame de Solis alone remained with their
+father in the House de Claes. Balthazar made over to them the family
+home in the rear house, and took up his own abode on the second floor
+of the front building.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Marguerite continued to keep watch over her father's material comfort,
+aided in the sweet task by Emmanuel. The noble girl received from the
+hands of love that most envied of all garlands, the wreath that
+happiness entwines and constancy keeps ever fresh. No couple ever
+afforded a better illustration of the complete, acknowledged, spotless
+felicity which all women cherish in their dreams. The union of two
+beings so courageous in the trials of life, who had loved each other
+through years with so sacred an affection, drew forth the respectful
+admiration of the whole community. Monsieur de Solis, who had long
+held an appointment as inspector-general of the University, resigned
+those functions to enjoy his happiness more freely, and remained at
+Douai where every one did such homage to his character and attainments
+that his name was proposed as candidate for the Electoral college
+whenever he should reach the required age. Marguerite, who had shown
+herself so strong in adversity, became in prosperity a sweet and
+tender woman.
+
+Throughout the following year Claes was grave and preoccupied; and
+yet, though he made a few inexpensive experiments for which his
+ordinary income sufficed, he seemed to neglect his laboratory.
+Marguerite restored all the old customs of the House of Claes, and
+gave a family fete every month in honor of her father, at which the
+Pierquins and the Conyncks were present; and she also received the
+upper ranks of society one day in the week at a "cafe" which became
+celebrated. Though frequently absent-minded, Claes took part in all
+these assemblages and became, to please his daughter, so willingly a
+man of the world that the family were able to believe he had renounced
+his search for the solution of the great problem.
+
+Three years went by. In 1828 family affairs called Emmanuel de Solis
+to Spain. Although there were three numerous branches between himself
+and the inheritance of the house of Solis, yellow fever, old age,
+barrenness, and other caprices of fortune, combined to make him the
+last lineal descendant of the family and heir to the titles and
+estates of his ancient house. Moreover, by one of those curious
+chances which seem impossible except in a book, the house of Solis had
+acquired the territory and titles of the Comtes de Nourho. Marguerite
+did not wish to separate from her husband, who was to stay in Spain
+long enough to settle his affairs, and she was, moreover, curious to
+see the castle of Casa-Real where her mother had passed her childhood,
+and the city of Granada, the cradle of the de Solis family. She left
+Douai, consigning the care of the house to Martha, Josette, and
+Lemulquinier. Balthazar, to whom Marguerite had proposed a journey
+into Spain, declined to accompany her on the ground of his advanced
+age; but certain experiments which he had long meditated, and to which
+he now trusted for the realization of his hopes were the real reason
+of his refusal.
+
+The Comte and Comtesse de Solis y Nourho were detained in Spain longer
+than they intended. Marguerite gave birth to a son. It was not until
+the middle of 1830 that they reached Cadiz, intending to embark for
+Italy on their way back to France. There, however, they received a
+letter from Felicie conveying disastrous news. Within a few months,
+their father had completely ruined himself. Gabriel and Pierquin were
+obliged to pay Lemulquinier a monthly stipend for the bare necessaries
+of the household. The old valet had again sacrificed his little
+property to his master. Balthazar was no longer willing to see any
+one, and would not even admit his children to the house. Martha and
+Josette were dead. The coachman, the cook, and the other servants had
+long been dismissed; the horses and carriages were sold. Though
+Lemulquinier maintained the utmost secrecy as to his master's
+proceedings, it was believed that the thousand francs supplied by
+Gabriel and Pierquin were spent chiefly on experiments. The small
+amount of provisions which the old valet purchased in the town seemed
+to show that the two old men contented themselves with the barest
+necessaries. To prevent the sale of the House of Claes, Gabriel and
+Pierquin were paying the interest of the sums which their father had
+again borrowed on it. None of his children had the slightest influence
+upon the old man, who at seventy years of age displayed extraordinary
+energy in bending everything to his will, even in matters that were
+trivial. Gabriel, Conyncks, and Pierquin had decided not to pay off
+his debts.
+
+This letter changed all Marguerite's travelling plans, and she
+immediately took the shortest road to Douai. Her new fortune and her
+past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar's debts; but she wished
+to do more, she wished to obey her mother's last injunction and save
+him from sinking dishonored to the grave. She alone could exercise
+enough ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the
+work of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from
+his enfeebled faculties. But she was also anxious to control him
+without wounding his susceptibilities,--not wishing to imitate the
+children of Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result
+for which he had sacrificed so much.
+
+Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of
+September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning. Marguerite
+ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which
+they found closed. The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered. A
+shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the
+noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight
+of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached,
+enticed also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that
+house on Marguerite's return to it. The shopkeeper told Monsieur de
+Solis's valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that
+Monsieur Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.
+
+Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,--glad to escape a
+scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to
+admit her into the house. Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man
+and prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant
+to notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.
+
+When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor.
+Horror overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as
+if a fire had swept over them. The glorious carved panellings of Van
+Huysum and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold. The dining-
+room was empty: there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a
+common deal table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two
+bowls, two forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which
+Claes and his servant had evidently just eaten. In a moment she had
+flown through her father's portion of the house, every room of which
+exhibited the same desolation as the parlor and dining-room. The idea
+of the Alkahest had swept like a conflagration through the building.
+Her father's bedroom had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which
+stood a miserable pewter candlestick with a tallow candle burned
+almost to the socket. The house was so completely stripped that not so
+much as a curtain remained at the windows. Every object of the
+smallest value,--everything, even the kitchen utensils, had been sold.
+
+Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
+in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber
+and found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-
+drawer she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's watch
+which he had pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and
+found it filled with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then
+she returned to her own appartement and ordered the door to be broken
+open--her father had respected it!
+
+Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
+of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
+feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
+tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
+climax, brought about in Marguerite's soul one of those moral
+reactions against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned
+to the parlor to wait her father's arrival, in a state of anxiety that
+was cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was
+she about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the
+fasts his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason?
+Tears flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the
+desecrated sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts,
+her useless precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,
+--all, even her little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all
+were parts of a poem of unutterable melancholy.
+
+Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
+the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at
+once so grand and yet so miserable.
+
+The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
+lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
+enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
+eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
+who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking
+the philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened
+century, this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated
+his purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up
+to him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies
+are uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
+genius is smothered under an indifference as brutal a that of the gate
+in which Dante died, and Tasso and Cervantes and "tutti quanti." The
+people are as backward as kings in understanding the creations of
+genius.
+
+These opinions on the subject of Balthazar Claes filtered, little by
+little, from the upper society of Douai to the bourgeoisie, and from
+the bourgeoisie to the lower classes. The old chemist excited pity
+among persons of his own rank, satirical curiosity among the others,--
+two sentiments big with contempt and with the "vae victis" with which
+the masses assail a man of genius when they see him in misfortune.
+Persons often stopped before the House of Claes to show each other the
+rose window of the garret where so much gold and so much coal had been
+consumed in smoke. When Balthazar passed along the streets they
+pointed to him with their fingers; often, on catching sight of him, a
+mocking jest or a word of pity would escape the lips of a working-man
+or some mere child. But Lemulquinier was careful to tell his master it
+was homage; he could deceive him with impunity, for though the old
+man's eyes retained the sublime clearness which results from the habit
+of living among great thoughts, his sense of hearing was enfeebled.
+
+To most of the peasantry, and to all vulgar and superstitious minds,
+Balthazar Claes was a sorcerer. The noble old mansion, once named by
+common consent "the House of Claes," was now called in the suburbs and
+the country districts "the Devil's House." Every outward sign, even
+the face of Lemulquinier, confirmed the ridiculous beliefs that were
+current about Balthazar. When the old servant went to market to
+purchase the few provisions necessary for their subsistence, picking
+out the cheapest he could find, insults were flung in as make-weights,
+--just as butchers slip bones into their customers' meat,--and he was
+fortunate, poor creature, if some superstitious market-woman did not
+refuse to sell him his meagre pittance lest she be damned by contact
+with an imp of hell.
+
+Thus the feelings of the whole town of Douai were hostile to the grand
+old man and to his attendant. The neglected state of their clothes
+added to this repulsion; they went about clothed like paupers who have
+seen better days, and who strive to keep a decent appearance and are
+ashamed to beg. It was probable that sooner or later Balthazar would
+be insulted in the streets. Pierquin, feeling how degrading to the
+family any public insult would be, had for some time past sent two or
+three of his own servants to follow the old man whenever he went out,
+and keep him in sight at a little distance, for the purpose of
+protecting him if necessary,--the revolution of July not having
+contributed to make the citizens respectful.
+
+By one of those fatalities which can never be explained, Claes and
+Lemulquinier had gone out early in the morning, thus evading the
+secret guardianship of Monsieur and Madame Pierquin. On their way back
+from the ramparts they sat down to sun themselves on a bench in the
+place Saint-Jacques, an open space crossed by children on their way to
+school. Catching sight from a distance of the defenceless old men,
+whose faces brightened as they sat basking in the sun, a crowd of boys
+began to talk of them. Generally, children's chatter ends in laughter;
+on this occasion the laughter led to jokes of which they did not know
+the cruelty. Seven or eight of the first-comers stood at a little
+distance, and examined the strange old faces with smothered laughter
+and remarks which attracted Lemulquinier's attention.
+
+"Hi! do you see that one with a head as smooth as my knee?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, he was born a Wise Man."
+
+"My papa says he makes gold," said another.
+
+The youngest of the troop, who had his basket full of provisions and
+was devouring a slice of bread and butter, advanced to the bench and
+said boldly to Lemulquinier,--
+
+"Monsieur, is it true you make pearls and diamonds?"
+
+"Yes, my little man," replied the valet, smiling and tapping him on
+the cheek; "we will give you some of you study well."
+
+"Ah! monsieur, give me some, too," was the general exclamation.
+
+The boys all rushed together like a flock of birds, and surrounded the
+old men. Balthazar, absorbed in meditation from which he was drawn by
+these sudden cries, made a gesture of amazement which caused a general
+shout of laughter.
+
+"Come, come, boys; be respectful to a great man," said Lemulquinier.
+
+"Hi, the old harlequin!" cried the lads; "the old sorcerer! you are
+sorcerers! sorcerers! sorcerers!"
+
+Lemulquinier sprang to his feet and threatened the crowd with his
+cane; they all ran to a little distance, picking up stones and mud. A
+workman who was eating his breakfast near by, seeing Lemulquinier
+brandish his cane to drive the boys away, thought he had struck them,
+and took their part, crying out,--
+
+"Down with the sorcerers!"
+
+The boys, feeling themselves encouraged, flung their missiles at the
+old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin's
+servants, appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were
+too late, however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted
+with mud. The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been
+preserved by a chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a
+quest of discovery that annihilates all passions, now suddenly
+divined, by the phenomenon of introsusception, the true meaning of the
+scene: his decrepit body could not sustain the frightful reaction he
+underwent in his feelings, and he fell, struck with paralysis, into
+the arms of Lemulquinier, who brought him to his home on a shutter,
+attended by his sons-in-law and their servants. No power could prevent
+the population of Douai from following the body of the old man to the
+door of his house, where Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite,
+and Gabriel, whom his sister had sent for, were waiting to receive
+him.
+
+The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he
+struggled less against the assaults of death than against the horror
+of seeing that his children had entered the house and penetrated the
+secret of his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the
+parlor and every care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition,
+towards evening, allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The
+paralysis, though skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state
+of semi-childhood; and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was
+found to be especially affected, perhaps because the old man's anger
+had concentrated all his forces upon it at the moment when he was
+about to apostrophize the children.
+
+This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
+law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
+this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
+more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
+that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
+his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
+to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
+late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
+the matter might be allowed to drop.
+
+Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
+denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
+seizure, the old father recovered his faculties and found himself once
+more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
+tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
+At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of
+her he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not
+fall. He was able to press his daughter's hand with his cold fingers,
+putting into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no
+longer had the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in
+that farewell of the brain which still lived, of the heart which
+gratitude revived. Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the
+long struggle with the gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the
+oblivion which awaited his memory, this giant among men was about to
+die. His children surrounded him with respectful affection; his dying
+eyes were cheered with images of plenty and the touching picture of
+his prosperous and noble family. His every look--by which alone he
+could manifest his feelings--was unchangeably affectionate; his eyes
+acquired such variety of expression that they had, as it were, a
+language of light, easy to comprehend.
+
+Marguerite paid her father's debts, and restored a modern splendor to
+the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
+left the old man's bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought
+and accomplish his slightest wish.
+
+Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
+attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
+children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
+bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
+occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
+family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
+the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur
+Claes listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside
+his bed.
+
+Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
+critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was
+summoned by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change
+which took place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor
+remained to watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the
+throes of inward convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last
+agony.
+
+The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
+paralysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
+sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
+an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
+out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to
+his bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming
+death made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of
+his usual satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel,
+instigated by the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the
+usual reading might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar
+was evidently struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words,
+"DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,"--which startled him, and he read a
+paragraph to Marguerite concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish
+mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a
+low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar
+heard it.
+
+Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
+frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
+fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features
+were illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face
+and rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and
+uttered with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, "EUREKA!"--
+I have found.
+
+He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
+died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
+last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
+Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!--
+by the fleshless fingers of Death.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
+referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+
+Casa-Real, Duc de
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  A Marriage Settlement
+
+Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+
+Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  A Marriage Settlement
+
+Protez and Chiffreville
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Cesar Birotteau
+
+Savaron de Savarus
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Albert Savarus
+
+Savarus, Albert Savaron de
+  The Quest of the Absolute
+  Albert Savarus
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Alkahest, by Honore de Balzac
+
+
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