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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.
M. Claes's grand search for the Absolute doesn't thrill us in the least; and Jean Valjean, gloomily picking his way through the sewers of Paris, with the spooney young man of the name of Marius upon his back, awakens no interest in our breasts. I say Jean Valjean picked his way gloomily, and I repeat it. No man, under these circumstances, could have skipped gayly.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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