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Updated: June 26, 2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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. "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.
"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?"
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.
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.
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.
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