anctity
of the feelings that flooded her soul, shone with greater beauty than
ever through her tears.

"Yes," she resumed in a broken voice, "you are dead to all. I see it
but too well. Science is more powerful within you than your own self;
it bears you to heights from which you will return no more to be the
companion of a poor woman. What joys can I still offer you? Ah! I would
fain believe, as a wretched consolation, that God has indeed created you
to make manifest his works, to chant his praises; that he has put within
your breast the irresistible power that has mastered you--But no; God is
good; he would keep in your heart some thoughts of the woman who adores
you, of the children you are bound to protect. It is the Evil One alone
who is helping you to walk amid these fathomless abysses, these clouds
of outer darkness, where the light of faith does not guide you,--nothing
guides you but a terrible belief in your own faculties! Were it
otherwise, would you not have seen that you have wasted nine hundred
thousand francs in three years? Oh! do me justice, you, my God on earth!
I reproach you not; were we alone I would bring you, on my knees, all
I possess and say, 'Take it, fling it into your furnace, turn it into
smoke'; and I should laugh to see it float away in vapor. Were you poor,
I would beg without shame for the coal to light your furnace. Oh! could
my body yield your hateful Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those
fires with joy, since your glory, your delight is in that unfound
secret. But our children, Claes, our children! what will become of them
if you do not soon discover this hellish thing? Do you know why Pierquin
came to-day? He came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and
cannot pay. I told him that you had the money, so that I might spare you
the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family
silver."

She saw her husband's eyes grow moist, and she flung herself
despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.

"My friend," she cried, "refrain awhile from these researches; let us
economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up
hereafter,--if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work. Oh! I do not
condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you,
do not reduce our children to beggary. Perhaps you cannot love them,
Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a
wretched life in place of the