Chapter 19

Josephine consulted Claes's notary, M. Pierquin, a young man and a relative of the family. He looked into matters, and found that Claes owed a hundred thousand francs to a firm of chemists in Paris. He warned Josephine that ruin was certain if this state of things continued. Hitherto she had loved husband more than children; now the mother was roused in her, and for her children's sakes she determined to act. She had sold her diamonds to provide for the housekeeping, since for six months Claes had given her nothing; she had sent away the governess; she had economised in a hundred directions. Now she must act against her husband. But her children came between her and her true life, since her true life was Balthazar's. She loved him with a sublime passion which could sacrifice everything except her children.

One Sunday, after vespers, in 1812, she sent for her husband, and awaited him at a window of one of the lower rooms, which looked on the garden. Tears were in her eyes. As she sat there, suddenly over her head sounded the footsteps of Claes, making her start. No one could have heard that slow and dragging step unmoved. One wondered if it were a living thing.

He entered the apartment, thin, round-shouldered, with disordered long hair, his cravat awry, his clothes stained and torn.

"Are you so absorbed in your work, Balthazar?" said Josephine. "It is thirty-three Sundays since you have been either to vespers or mass."

"Vespers?" he questioned, vaguely. Then added: "Ah, the children have been to church," and walked to the window and looked at the tulips. As he stood there, he said to himself: "But yes, why shouldn't they combine in a given time?"

His poor wife asked herself in despair, "Is he going mad?" Then, rousing herself, she called him by his name. Without paying heed to her he coughed and went to one of the spittoons beside the wainscot.

"Monsieur, I speak to you!"

"What of that?" he demanded, turning swiftly. She became deadly white.

"Forgive me, dear," she whispered, and cried: "Ah, this is killing me!"

Tears in her eyes roused Claes out of his reverie. He took her into his arms, pushed open a door, and sprang lightly up the staircase. Finding the door of her apartment locked, he laid her gently in an armchair.

"Thank you, dear," she murmured. "I have not been so near your heart for a long time."

Her loveliness postponed disaster. Enamoured by her beauty, rescued to humanity, Claes returned for a brief interval to the family life, and was adorable to his wife, charming to his children. When they were alone together, Josephine questioned him as to his secret work, telling him that she had begun to study chemistry in order that she might share his life. Touched by this devotion, Claes declared his secret. A Polish officer had come to their house in 1809, and had discussed chemistry with Claes. The result of the conversations had set Claes to search for the single element out of which all things are perhaps composed. The Polish officer had confided certain secrets to him, saying: "You are a disciple of Lavoisier; you are wealthy, you are free; I will give you my idea. The Primitive Element must be common to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. Force must be the common principle of positive and negative electricity. Demonstrate these two hypotheses, and you will hold in your hands the First Cause, the solution of the great riddle of existence."

As Claes rattled away, Josephine suddenly exclaimed, against her will: "So it was this man, who spent but one night with us, that stole your love from me and your children! Did he make the Sign of the Cross? Did you observe him closely? He was Satan! Only the devil could have stolen you from me. Ever since his visit you have ceased to be father and husband."

"Do you rebuke me," Balthazar asked, "for being superior to common men?"

And he poured out a tale of his achievements. In the height of his passion for her Josephine had never seen his face so shining with enthusiasm as it was now. Tears came into her eyes.

"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen," he rhapsodised; "I have analysed endless substances. I have analysed tears! Tears are nothing more than phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucus, and water."

He ran on till she cried upon him to stop.

"You horrify me," she said, "with your blasphemies. What my love is----"

"Spiritualised matter, given off," replied Claes; "the secret, no doubt, of the Absolute. If I am the first to find it out! Think of it! I will make metals and diamonds. What Nature does I will do."

"You trespass on God!" Josephine exclaimed impatiently. "You deny God! Ah, God has a force which you will never exercise!"

"What is that?" he demanded.

"Motion. Analysis is one thing, creation is another," she said. Her pleadings were successful. Balthazar abandoned his researches, and the family removed to the country. He was awakened by his wife's love to the knowledge that he had brought his fortune to the verge of ruin. He promised to abandon his experiments. As some amends, he threw himself into preparations for a great ball at the Maison Claes in honour of his wedding day. The festivity was saddened by the news of disaster to the Grand Army at Beresina. One of the letters that arrived that day was from the Polish officer, dying of his wounds, who sent Claes, as a legacy, some of his ideas for discovering the Absolute. No one danced; the fête was gloomy; only Marguerite shone like a lovely flower on the anxious company. When the guests departed, Balthazar showed Josephine the letter from the Pole. She did everything a woman could do to distract his thoughts. She made the home life enchanting. She entertained. She introduced the movement of the world into the great house. In vain. Her husband's _ennui_ was terrible to behold. "I release you from your promise," she said to him one day.

Balthazar returned with Lemulquinier to the attic, and the experiments began anew. He was quite happy again.

A year passed; the Absolute was undiscovered. Once more ruin haunted the state room of the Maison Claes. Josephine's confessor, the Abbé de Solis, who had sold her jewels, now suggested selling some of the Flemish pictures. Josephine explained the situation to her husband.

"What do you think?" he cried. "I am within an ace of finding the Absolute. I have only to discover--"

Josephine broke down. She left her husband, and retired downstairs to her children. The servants were summoned. Madame Claes looked like death. Everybody was alarmed. Lemulquinier was told to go for the priest. He said he had monsieur's orders to see to in the laboratory.

_III.--The Passing of Josephine_

It was the beginning of the end for Josephine. As she lay dying, she saw judgment in the eyes of Marguerite--judgment on Balthazar. Her last days were sorrowed by the thought that the children would condemn their father. Balthazar came sometimes to sit with her, but he appeared to be unaware of her situation. He was charming to the younger children, but he was dead to the true condition of his wife.

One thing gave her peace. The Abbé de Solis brought his nephew to the house, and this young man, Emmanuel, who was good and noble, evidently created a favourable impression on Marguerite. The dying mother watched the progress of this love story with affectionate satisfaction. It was all she had to light her way to the grave. Pierquin told her that Balthazar had ordered him to raise three hundred thousand francs on his estate. She saw that ruin could not be averted; she lay at death's door, deserted by the husband she still worshipped, thinking of the children she had sacrificed. The noble character of Marguerite cheered her last hours. In that child, she would live on and be a providence to the family.

One day she wrote a letter, addressed and sealed it, and showed it to Marguerite. It was addressed: "To my daughter, Marguerite." She placed it under her pillow, said she would rest, and presently fell into a deep slumber. When she awoke, all her children were kneeling round her in prayer, and with them was Emmanuel.

"The hour has come, dear children," she said gently, "when we must say farewell. You are all here"--she looked about her--"and he..." Marguerite sent Emmanuel for her father, and Balthazar's answer to the summons was, "I am coming."

When Emmanuel returned, Madame Claes sent him for his uncle the priest, bidding him take the two boys with him; then she turned to her daughters. "God is taking me," she said. "What will become of you? When I am gone, Marguerite, if you are ever in need of food, read this letter which I have addressed to you. Love your father, but shield your sister and your brothers. It may be your duty to withstand him. He will want money; he will ask you for it. Do not forget your duty to your father, but remember your duty to your sister and brothers. Your father would not injure his children of set purpose. He is noble, he is good. He is full of love for you. He is a great man working at a great task. Fill my place. Do not cause him grief by reproaches; never judge him; be, between him and those in your charge, a gentle mediator."

One of the servants had to go and bang on the laboratory door for Claes. "Madame is dying!" cried the indignant old body. "They are waiting for you to administer the last sacrament."

"I'll be there in a minute," answered Claes. When he entered the room, the Abbé de Solis and the children were kneeling round the mother's bed. His wife's face flushed at his entrance. With a loving smile, she asked: "Were you on the point of resolving nitrogen?"

"I have done it!" he answered, with triumph; "nitrogen is made up of oxygen and------" He stopped, checked by a murmur, which roused him from his dream. "What did they say?" he asked. "Are you really worse? What has happened?"

"This has happened," said the Abbé; "your wife is dying, and you have killed her."

Priest and children withdrew.

"What does he mean?" asked Claes.

"Dearest," she answered, "your love was my life; I could not live without it."

He took her hand, and kissed it.

"When have I not loved you?" he asked.

She refused to utter a reproach. For her children's sake she told the narrative of his six years' search for the Absolute, which had destroyed her life and swallowed up two million francs, making him see the horror of their desolation. "Have pity, have pity," she cried, "on our children!"

Claes shouted for Lemulquinier, and bade him go instantly to the laboratory and smash everything. "I abandon science for ever!" he cried.

"Too late!" sighed the dying woman; then she cried, "Marguerite!"

The child came from the doorway, horrified by the stricken face of her mother. Once again the loved name was repeated, "Marguerite!" loudly, as though to fix in her mind the charge laid upon her soul. It was the last word uttered by Josephine. As the soul passed, Balthazar, from the foot of the bed, looked up to the pillows where Marguerite was sitting, and their eyes met. The father trembled.

In the sorrow of bereavement Marguerite discovered that she possessed two friends--Pierquin the notary, and Emmanuel de Solis. Pierquin thought it would be a suitable thing to save the wreckage of the estate and marry the beautiful Marguerite, whose family was doubly noble. Emmanuel offered to prepare Marguerite's brothers for college, with a tact and a charm which declared a fine nature. Pierquin was a man of business turned lover. Emmanuel was a lover turned by misfortune into a man of action.

_IV.--The Hour of Darkness_

For some considerable time Balthazar avoided experimental chemistry, and confined himself to theoretical speculations. He took long walks on the ramparts; was gloomy, restless, and preoccupied at home. Marguerite endeavoured to distract his thoughts. One day the old servant, Martha, said to her: "All is over with us; master is on the road to hell again!" And she pointed to clouds of smoke issuing from the laboratory chimney. Marguerite lived as carefully as a nun; all expenses were cut down. She denied herself ordinary comforts to prepare for the crash. Thanks to Emmanuel, the boys were now advancing in their studies, and their future was at least unclouded. But Balthazar had developed the gambler's recklessness. He sold a forest; he mortgaged his house and silver; he had no more food than a nigger who sells his wife for a glass of brandy in the morning, and weeps over his loss at night. Once Marguerite spoke to her father. She acknowledged that he was master, that his children would obey him at all costs; but he must know that they scarcely had bread in the house.

"Bread!" he cried; "no bread in the house of a Claes! Where is all our property, then?"

She told him how he had sold everything.

"Then, how do we live?"

She held up her needle.

Time went on, and fresh debts hammered at the door of the Maison Claes. At last Marguerite was obliged to face her father, and charge him with madness.

"Madness!" he cried, firing up and springing to his feet. There was something so majestic and commanding in his attitude that made Marguerite tremble at his feet. "Your mother would never have used that word; she always attached due importance to my scientific researches."

She could not bear his reproaches, and fled from him. She felt that the time had come, for they were now on the verge of beggary, to break the seal of her mother's letter. That letter expressed the most divine love, praying that God would permit her spirit to be with Marguerite while she read the words of this last message; and it told her that the Abbé Solis, if living, or his nephew, held for her a sum of a hundred and seventy thousand francs, and on this sum she must live, and leave her father if he refused to abandon his researches. "I could never have said these words," Josephine had written; "not even on the brink of the grave." And she entreated her child to be reverent in withstanding her father, and if resistance was inevitable to resist him on her knees. The abbé was dead, but Emmanuel held the money. In their discussions about the management of this sum, the two young people drew closer together. The poor father, brought to ruin, confessed his madness, and uttered the terrible despair of a beaten scientist. To comfort him, Marguerite said that his debts would be paid with her money. His face lit up. "You have money! Give it to me; I will make you rich." Once more the madness returned.

Emmanuel came with three thousand ducats in his pockets. They were hiding them in the hollow column of a pedestal, when, looking up, Marguerite saw her father observing them. "I heard gold," he said, advancing. To save her, Emmanuel lied. He sinned against his conscience for her sake. The money, he said belonged to him, and he had lent it to Marguerite. When he was gone, Claes said: "I must have that money."

"If you take it," answered Marguerite, "you will be a thief."

He knelt to her; she would not relent. He caressed her; she called God to look down upon them if he stole the money. He rose, bade her a sorrowful farewell, and left the room. Something warned her; she hurried after him, to find him with a pistol at his head. "Take all I possess," she cried. Embracing her, he promised that if he failed this time he would deliver himself into her hands.

Time passed and the Absolute was not discovered. A wealthy cousin of Claes, M. Conyncks, came to Douai in his travelling carriage, and soon after he and Marguerite journeyed to Paris. When she returned, it was to announce that, through M. Conynck's influence, Balthazar had been appointed receiver of taxes in Brittany, and must set out at once to take up the appointment.

"You drive me out of my own house!" he exclaimed, with anger. At first he refused to go, furious and indignant; but she persisted, and he had to surrender. He went with Lemulquinier to his laboratory for the last time. The two old men were very sad as they released the gases and evaporated acids.

"Ah, look," said Claes, pausing before a capsule connected with the wires of a battery; "if only we could watch out the end of this experiment! Carbon and sulphur. Crystallisation should take place; the carbon might certainly result in a crystal ..."

While Claes was in exile, fortune came to the family. The son Gabriel, assisted by M. Conyncks, had made a large sum of money as the engineer of a canal. Emmanuel de Solis had given Marguerite the fortune he inherited from ancestors in Spain. Pierquin, who had turned his attention to Marguerite's younger sister, had proved himself kind to the family. Once again the Maison Claes was in prosperity, with pictures on its walls, and with handsome furniture in its state apartments.

When Conyncks and Marguerite went to fetch the father, they found him old and broken. The child was greatly touched by his appearance, and questioned him alone. She discovered that instead of saving money, he was heavily in debt, and that he had been seeking the Absolute as industriously in Brittany as in the attic of the Maison Claes.

On his return, the old man brightened and became glad. The ancient home gave him joy. He embraced his children, looked around the happy house of his fathers, and exclaimed: "Ah, Josephine, if only you were here to admire our Marguerite!" The marriages of Marguerite and Felicie, the younger sister, were hurried forward. During the reading of the contracts Lemulquinier suddenly burst into the room, crying: "Monsieur! Monsieur!"

Claes whispered to his daughter that the servant had lent him all his savings--20,000 francs--and had doubtless come to claim them on learning that the master was once more a rich man. But Lemulquinier cried: "Monsieur! Monsieur!"

"Well?" demanded Claes.

In the trembling hand of the old servant lay a diamond. Claes rushed towards him.

"I went to the laboratory," began the servant--Claes looked up at him quickly, as though to say: "You were the first to go there!"--"and I found in the capsule we left behind us this diamond! The battery has done it without our help!"

"Forgive me!" cried Claes, turning to his children and his guests. "This will drive me mad! Cursed exile! God has worked in my laboratory, and I was not there to see! A miracle has taken place! I might have seen it--I have missed it for ever!" Suddenly he checked, and advancing to Marguerite, presented her with the diamond. "My angel," he said gently, "this belongs to you." Then, to the notary: "Let us proceed."

_V.--Discovery of the Absolute_

Happiness reigned in the Maison Claes, Balthazar conducted a few but inexpensive experiments, and surrendered himself more and more to the happiness of home life. It was as if the devil had been exorcised. The death of relatives presently carried Emmanuel and Marguerite to Spain, and their return was delayed by the birth of a child. When they did arrive in Flanders, one morning towards the end of September, they found the house in the Rue de Paris shut up, and a ring at the bell brought no one to open the door. A shopkeeper near at hand said that M. Claes had left the house with Lemulquinier about an hour ago. Emmanuel went in search of them, while a locksmith opened the door of the Maison Claes. The house was as if the Absolute in the form of fire had passed through all its rooms. Pictures, furniture, carpets, hangings, carvings--all were swept clean away. Marguerite wept as she looked about her, and forgave her father. She went downstairs to await his coming. How he must have suffered in this bare house! Fear filled her heart. Had his reason failed him? Should she see him enter--a tottering and enfeebled old man, broken by the sufferings which he had borne so proudly for science? As she waited, the past rose before her eyes--the long past of struggle against their enemy, the Absolute; the long past, when she was a child, and her mother had been now so joyous and now so sorrowful.

But she did not realise the calamity of her father's tragedy--a tragedy at once sublime and miserable. To the people of Douai he was not a scientific genius wrestling with Nature for her hidden mysteries, but a wicked old spendthrift, greedy like a miser for the Philosopher's Stone. Everybody in Douai, from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie to the people, knew all about old Claes, "the alchemist." His home was called the "Devil's House." People pointed at him, shouted after him in the street. Lemulquinier said that these were murmurs of applause for genius.

It happened that on this morning of Marguerite's return, Balthazar and Lemulquinier sat down on a bench in the Place Saint-Jacques to rest in the sun. Some children passing to school saw the two old men, talked about them, laughed together, and presently approached. One of them, who carried a basket, and was eating a piece of bread and butter, said to Lemulquinier: "Is it true you make diamonds and pearls?"

Lemulquinier patted the urchin's cheek.

"Yes, little fellow, it is true," he said. "Stick to your books, get knowledge, and perhaps we will give you some."

They began to crowd round, and became more daring.

"You should show respect to a great man," said Lemulquinier. At this the children laughed aloud, and began to shout: "Sorcerers! Old sorcerers!" Lemulquinier sprang up with his stick raised, and the children, beating a retreat, gathered up mud and stones. A workman, seeing Lemulquinier making for the children with a stick, came to their rescue with the dangerous cry: "Down with sorcerers!"

Thus emboldened, the children made a savage attack upon the two old men with a shower of stones. At this moment Emmanuel came upon the scene. He was too late. Claes had been suddenly jerked from the ideal world in which he theorised and toiled into the real world of men. The shock was too much for him; he sank into the arms of Lemulquinier, paralysed.

He lived in this condition for some time, expressing all his affection and gratitude to Marguerite by pressing her hand with his cold fingers. She refurnished the house, and surrounded him with comforts. His children were affectionate to him. They came and sat by his bedside, and took their meals in his room. His great happiness was listening to Emmanuel's reading of the newspapers.

One night he became very much worse, and the doctor was summoned in haste. The stricken man made violent efforts to speak. His lips trembled, but no sound issued. His eyes were on fire with the thoughts he could not utter. His face was haggard with agony. Drops of perspiration oozed out of his forehead. His hands twitched convulsively in the despair of his mind.

On the following morning his children saluted him with deepest and most lingering love, knowing that the last hour was at hand. His face did not light; he made none of his usual responses to their tender affection. Pierquin signalled to Emmanuel, and he broke the wrapper of the newspaper, and was about to read aloud in order to distract Claes, when his eyes were arrested by the heading:

DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE

In a low voice he read the intelligence to his wife. It narrated that a famous mathematician in Poland had made terms for selling the secret of the Absolute, which he had discovered. As Emmanuel ceased to read, Marguerite asked for the paper; but Claes had heard the almost whispered words.

Of a sudden the dying man lifted himself up on his elbows. To his frightened family his glance was like the flash of lightning. The fringe of hair above his forehead stood up; every line in his countenance quivered with excitement, a thrill of passion moved across his face and made it sublime.