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"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.
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.
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.
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.
She must have taken him, he thought, to some place where there were people about him who would not let him alone, but he could remember nothing more until he found himself creeping into a hole which he seemed to know, thinking he was a fox with the hounds after him. 'What's my claes like, Kirsty? he asked at this point.
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?
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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