Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
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."
"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."
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, 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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." "Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking