________________________________________________
_ On the morrow of this evening so eventful for the Claes family,
Balthazar, from whom Josephine had doubtless obtained some promise as
to the cessation of his researches, remained in the parlor, and did
not enter his laboratory. The succeeding day the household prepared to
move into the country, where they stayed for more than two months,
only returning to town in time to prepare for the fete which Claes
determined to give, as in former years, to commemorate his wedding-
day. He now began by degrees to obtain proof of the disorder which his
experiments and his indifference had brought into his business
affairs.
Madame Claes, far from irritating the wound by remarking on it,
continually found remedies for the evil that was done. Of the seven
servants who customarily served the family, there now remained only
Lemulquinier, Josette the cook, and an old waiting-woman, named
Martha, who had never left her mistress since the latter left her
convent. It was of course impossible to give a fete to the whole
society of Douai with so few servants, but Madame Claes overcame all
difficulties by proposing to send to Paris for a cook, to train the
gardener's son as a waiter, and to borrow Pierquin's manservant. Thus
the pinched circumstances of the family passed unnoticed by the
community.
During the twenty days of preparation for the fete, Madame Claes was
cleverly able to outwit her husband's listlessness. She commissioned
him to select the rarest plants and flowers to decorate the grand
staircase, the gallery, and the salons; then she sent him to Dunkerque
to order one of those monstrous fish which are the glory of the
burgher tables in the northern departments. A fete like that the Claes
were about to give is a serious affair, involving thought and care and
active correspondence, in a land where traditions of hospitality put
the family honor so much at stake that to servants as well as masters
a grand dinner is like a victory won over the guests. Oysters arrived
from Ostend, grouse were imported from Scotland, fruits came from
Paris; in short, not the smallest accessory was lacking to the
hereditary luxury.
A ball at the House of Claes had an importance of its own. The
government of the department was then at Douai, and the anniversary
fete of the Claes usually opened the winter season and set the fashion
to the neighborhood. For fifteen years, Balthazar had endeavored to
make it a distinguished occasion, and had succeeded so well that the
fete was talked of throughout a circumference of sixty miles, and the
toilettes, the guests, the smallest details, the novelties exhibited,
and the events that took place, were discussed far and wide. These
preparations now prevented Claes from thinking, for the time being, of
the Alkahest. Since his return to social life and domestic bliss, the
servant of science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming,
as the master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought
of surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special
character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among
all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.
The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the Twenty-
ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the grand
army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made known on
the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound grief was
felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved by a
natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.
Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for
Balthazar from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he
wrote, from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He
remembered his promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host
several ideas on the subject of the Absolute, which had come to him
since the period of their meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a
reverie which apparently did honor to his patriotism; but his wife was
not misled by it. To her, this festal day brought a double mourning:
and the ball, during which the House of Claes shone with departing
lustre, was sombre and sad in spite of its magnificence, and the many
choice treasures gathered by the hands of six generations, which the
people of Douai now beheld for the last time.
Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes
by the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and
especially by the harmony of her form and countenance with the
characteristics of her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish
girl whom the painters of that country loved to represent,--the head
perfectly rounded and full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and
laid smoothly on the brow, gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome
arms, natural stoutness which did not detract from her beauty, a timid
air, and yet, on the high square brow an expression of firmness,
hidden at present under an apparent calmness and docility. Without
being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little natural enjoyment.
Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief expressions of
Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that seemed cold at
first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain grace of
outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic
happiness. By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet
explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was
the living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of
Bruges, whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the
resemblance.
The supper gave some life to the ball. If the military disasters
forbade the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not
exclude the pleasures of the table. The true patriots, however,
retired early; only the more indifferent remained, together with a few
card players and the intimate friends of the family. Little by little
the brilliantly lighted house, to which all the notabilities of Douai
had flocked, sank into silence, and by one o'clock in the morning the
great gallery was deserted, the lights were extinguished in one salon
after another, and the court-yard, lately so bustling and brilliant,
grew dark and gloomy,--prophetic image of the future that lay before
the family. When the Claes returned to their own appartement,
Balthazar gave his wife the letter he had received from the Polish
officer: Josephine returned it with a mournful gesture; she foresaw
the coming doom.
From that day forth, Balthazar made no attempt to disguise the
weariness and the depression that assailed him. In the mornings, after
the family breakfast, he played for awhile in the parlor with little
Jean, and talked to his daughters, who were busy with their sewing, or
embroidery or lace-work; but he soon wearied of the play and of the
talk, and seemed at last to get through with them as a duty. When his
wife came down again after dressing, she always found him sitting in
an easy-chair looking blankly at Marguerite and Felicie, quite
undisturbed by the rattle of their bobbins. When the newspaper was
brought in, he read it slowly like a retired merchant at a loss how to
kill the time. Then he would get up, look at the sky through the
window panes, go back to his chair and mend the fire drearily, as
though he were deprived of all consciousness of his own movements by
the tyranny of ideas.
Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons
who have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for
subjects of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of
material existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of
expansion which need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of
material life cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide
promptly; and the mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving
natures. Consequently, two isolated beings who know each other
thoroughly ought to seek their enjoyments in the higher regions of
thought; for it is impossible to satisfy with paltry things the
immensity of the relation between them. Moreover, when a man has
accustomed himself to deal with great subjects, he becomes unamusable,
unless he preserves in the depths of his heart a certain guileless
simplicity and unconstraint which often make great geniuses such
charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a rare human
phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know all, and
comprehend all.
During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education
of his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such
resources were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when
Josephine's relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon
to Louis XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps
of power or the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the
sham embassies from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After
wasting the revenues of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or
successful, was reduced to the expedients of a family heir to raise
the money he needed; in the midst of his grandeur he felt his
impotence, and the royal nurse who had rocked the cradles of his
children was often at her wit's end to rock his, or soothe the monarch
now suffering from his misuse of men and things, of life and God.
Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too much power. Stifling in the
clutch of a single thought, he dreamed of the pomps of Science, of
treasures for the human race, of glory for himself. He suffered as
artists suffer in the grip of poverty, as Samson suffered beneath the
pillars of the temple. The result was the same for the two sovereigns;
though the intellectual monarch was crushed by his inward force, the
other by his weakness.
What could Pepita do, singly, against this species of scientific
nostalgia? After employing every means that family life afforded her,
she called society to the rescue, and gave two "cafes" every week.
Cafes at Douai took the place of teas. A cafe was an assemblage which,
during a whole evening, the guests sipped the delicious wines and
liqueurs which overflow the cellars of that ever-blessed land, ate the
Flemish dainties and took their "cafe noir" or their "cafe au lait
frappe," while the women sang ballads, discussed each other's
toilettes, and related the gossip of the day. It was a living picture
by Mieris or Terburg, without the pointed gray hats, the scarlet
plumes, or the beautiful costumes of the sixteenth century. And yet,
Balthazar's efforts to play the part of host, his constrained
courtesy, his forced animation, left him the next day in a state of
languor which showed but too plainly the depths of the inward ill.
These continual fetes, weak remedies for the real evil, only increased
it. Like branches which caught him as he rolled down the precipice,
they retarded Claes's fall, but in the end he fell the heavier. Though
he never spoke of his former occupations, never showed the least
regret for the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he
grew to have the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression
of a sick person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the
very manner with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic
pyramids in the fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he
was doing. When night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt
released him from the importunities of thought: the next day he rose
wearily to encounter another day,--seeming to measure time as the
tired traveller measures the desert he is forced to cross.
If Madame Claes knew the cause of this languor she endeavored not to
see the extent of its ravages. Full of courage against the sufferings
of the mind, she was helpless against the generous impulses of the
heart. She dared not question Balthazar when she saw him listening to
the laughter of little Jean or the chatter of his girls, with the air
of a man absorbed in secret thoughts; but she shuddered when she saw
him shake off his melancholy and try, with generous intent, to seem
cheerful, that he might not distress others. The little coquetries of
the father with his daughters, or his games with little Jean,
moistened the eyes of the poor wife, who often left the room to hide
the feelings that heroic effort caused her,--a heroism the cost of
which is well understood by women, a generosity that well-nigh breaks
their heart. At such times Madame Claes longed to say, "Kill me, and
do what you will!"
Little by little Balthazar's eyes lost their fire and took the
glaucous opaque tint which overspreads the eyes of old men. His
attentions to his wife, his manner of speaking, his whole bearing,
grew heavy and inert. These symptoms became more marked towards the
end of April, terrifying Madame Claes, to whom the sight was now
intolerable, and who had all along reproached herself a thousand times
while she admired the Flemish loyalty which kept her husband faithful
to his promise.
At last, one day when Balthazar seemed more depressed than ever, she
hesitated no longer; she resolved to sacrifice everything and bring
him back to life.
"Dear friend," she said, "I release you from your promise."
Balthazar looked at her in amazement.
"You are thinking of your researches, are you not?" she continued.
He answered by a gesture of startling eagerness. Far from
remonstrating, Madame Claes, who had had leisure to sound the abyss
into which they were about to fall together, took his hand and pressed
it, smiling.
"Thank you," she said; "now I am sure of my power. You sacrificed more
than your life to me. In future, be the sacrifices mine. Though I have
sold some of my diamonds, enough are left, with those my brother gave
me, to get the necessary money for your experiments. I intended those
jewels for my daughters, but your glory shall sparkle in their stead;
and, besides, you will some day replace them with other and finer
diamonds."
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? At this moment she
chose to believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her
connivance in the probable wreck of their fortunes.
"The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.
He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
the room and wished him good-morning. 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.
The future of her children, their father's credit, were two motives as
powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
unhappy woman never knew another hour's peace of mind. The demon of
Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair,
paralyzed by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food,
like those of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory,
tormented her spirit and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes,
blaming herself for compliance with a passion whose object was futile
and condemned by the Church, she would rise, go to the window on the
courtyard and gaze with terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If
the smoke were rising, an expression of despair came into her face, a
conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in her heart and mind. She
beheld her children's future fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not
saving their father's life? was it not her first duty to make him
happy? This last thought calmed her for a moment.
She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
building,--a living death of untold miseries. 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.
Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding
the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the
other.
Feeble and defenceless against the terrible prostrations of thought,
the poor woman at last gave way under the alternations of hope and
despair which increased the distress of the loving wife, and the
anxieties of the mother trembling for her children. She now practised
the doleful silence which formerly chilled her heart, not observing
the gloom that pervaded the house, where whole days went by in that
melancholy parlor without a smile, often without a word. Led by sad
maternal foresight, she trained her daughters to household work, and
tried to make them skilful in womanly employments, that they might
have the means of living if destitution came. The outward calm of this
quiet home covered terrible agitations. Towards the end of the summer
Balthazar had used the money derived from the diamonds, and was twenty
thousand francs in debt to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville.
In August, 1813, about a year after the scene with which this history
begins, although Claes had made a few valuable experiments, for which,
unfortunately, he cared but little, his efforts had been without
result as to the real object of his researches. There came a day when
he ended the whole series of experiments, and the sense of his
impotence crushed him; the certainty of having fruitlessly wasted
enormous sums of money drove him to despair. It was a frightful
catastrophe. He left the garret, descended slowly to the parlor, and
threw himself into a chair in the midst of his children, remaining
motionless for some minutes as though dead, making no answer to the
questions his wife pressed upon him. Tears came at last to his relief,
and he rushed to his own chamber that no one might witness his
despair.
Josephine followed him and drew him into her own room, where, alone
with her, Balthazar gave vent to his anguish. These tears of a man,
these broken words of the hopeless toiler, these bitter regrets of the
husband and father, did Madame Claes more harm than all her past
sufferings. The victim consoled the executioner. When Balthazar said
to her in a tone of dreadful conviction: "I am a wretch; I have
gambled away the lives of my children, and your life; you can have no
happiness unless I kill myself,"--the words struck home to her heart;
she knew her husband's nature enough to fear he might at once act out
the despairing wish: an inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources
of life itself, seized her, and was all the more dangerous because she
controlled its violent effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.
"My friend," she said, "I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose
friendship does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction
at our ruin, but an old man who has been as good to me as a father.
The Abbe de Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save
ourselves from ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those
in the gallery is enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your
property, and also all that you owe to Messieurs Protez and
Chiffreville, who have no doubt an account against you."
Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which
was now white.
"Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus, to
display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families: he
thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with
very little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in
course of time and by economy; meantime you will be happy."
Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the
protector of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one
with his Pepita's, now held her in his arms without perceiving the
horrible convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair
and her lips with a nervous shudder.
"I dared not tell you," he said, "that between me and the
Unconditioned, the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To
gasify metals, I only need to find the means of submitting them to
intense heat in some centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is
nil,--in short, in a vacuum."
Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected
a passionate acknowledgment of her sacrifices--she received a problem
in chemistry! The poor woman left her husband abruptly and returned to
the parlor, where she fell into a chair between her frightened
daughters, and burst into tears. Marguerite and Felicie took her
hands, kneeling one on each side of her, not knowing the cause of her
grief, and asking at intervals, "Mother, what is it?"
"My poor children, I am dying; I feel it."
The answer struck home to Marguerite's heart; she saw, for the first
time on her mother's face, the signs of that peculiar pallor which
only comes on olive-tinted skins.
"Martha, Martha!" cried Felicie, "come quickly; mamma wants you."
The old duenna ran in from the kitchen, and as soon as she saw the
livid hue of the dusky skin usually high-colored, she cried out in
Spanish,--
"Body of Christ! madame is dying!"
Then she rushed precipitately back, told Josette to heat water for a
footbath, and returned to the parlor.
"Don't alarm Monsieur Claes; say nothing to him, Martha," said her
mistress. "My poor dear girls," she added, pressing Marguerite and
Felicie to her heart with a despairing action; "I wish I could live
long enough to see you married and happy. Martha," she continued,
"tell Lemulquinier to go to Monsieur de Solis and ask him in my name
to come here."
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.
He, cold and impassive, went on eating at the corner of a table before
one of the windows of the kitchen, where all was kept as clean as the
boudoir of a fine lady.
"I knew how it would end," said Josette, glancing at the valet and
mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold.
"There's no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing
himself by chopping up a fortune like his into sausage-meat."
Josette, whose head was covered by a round cap with crimped borders,
which made it look like a German nut-cracker, cast a sour look at
Lemulquinier, which the greenish tinge of her prominent little eyes
made almost venomous. The old valet shrugged his shoulders with a
motion worthy of Mirobeau when irritated; then he filled his large
mouth with bread and butter sprinkled with chopped onion.
"Instead of thwarting monsieur, madame ought to give him more money,"
he said; "and then we should soon be rich enough to swim in gold.
There's not the thickness of a farthing between us and--"
"Well, you've got twenty thousand francs laid by; why don't you give
'em to monsieur? he's your master, and if you are so sure of his
doings--"
"You don't know anything about them, Josette. Mind your pots and pans,
and heat the water," remarked the old Fleming, interrupting the cook.
"I know enough to know there used to be several thousand ounces of
silver-ware about this house which you and your master have melted up;
and if you are allowed to have your way, you'll make ducks and drakes
of everything till there's nothing left."
"And monsieur," added Martha, entering the kitchen, "will kill madame,
just to get rid of a woman who restrains him and won't let him swallow
up everything he's got. He's possessed by the devil; anybody can see
that. You don't risk your soul in helping him, Mulquinier, because you
haven't got any; look at you! sitting there like a bit of ice when we
are all in such distress; the young ladies are crying like two
Magdalens. Go and fetch Monsieur l'Abbe de Solis."
"I've got something to do for monsieur. He told me to put the
laboratory in order," said the valet. "Besides, it's too far--go
yourself."
"Just hear the brute!" cried Martha. "Pray who is to give madame her
foot-bath? do you want her to die? she has got a rush of blood to the
head."
"Mulquinier," said Marguerite, coming into the servants' hall, which
adjoined the kitchen, "on your way back from Monsieur de Solis, call
at Dr. Pierquin's house and ask him to come here at once."
"Ha! you've got to go now," said Josette.
"Mademoiselle, monsieur told me to put the laboratory in order," said
Lemulquinier, facing the two women and looking them down, with a
despotic air.
"Father," said Marguerite, to Monsieur Claes who was just then
descending the stairs, "can you let Mulquinier do an errand for us in
town?"
"Now you're forced to go, you old barbarian!" cried Martha, as she
heard Monsieur Claes put Mulquinier at his daughter's bidding.
The lack of good-will and devotion shown by the old valet for the
family whom he served was a fruitful cause of quarrel between the two
women and Lemulquinier, whose cold-heartedness had the effect of
increasing the loyal attachment of Josette and the old duenna.
This dispute, apparently so paltry, was destined to influence the
future of the Claes family when, at a later period, they needed succor
in misfortune. _
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