not possible!" exclaimed Marguerite.

"Come and see the signs of their traffic."

Mademoiselle Claes ran to the window and saw the light smoke rising from
the flue of the laboratory.

"I shall be twenty-one in a few months," she thought, "and I shall know
how to oppose the destruction of our property."

In giving way to his passion Balthazar necessarily felt less respect
for the interests of his children than he formerly had felt for the
happiness of his wife. The barriers were less high, his conscience was
more elastic, his passion had increased in strength. He now set forth in
his career of glory, toil, hope, and poverty, with the fervor of a man
profoundly trustful of his convictions. Certain of the result, he worked
night and day with a fury that alarmed his daughters, who did not know
how little a man is injured by work that gives him pleasure.

Her father had no sooner recommenced his experiments than Marguerite
retrenched the superfluities of the table, showing a parsimony worthy of
a miser, in which Josette and Martha admirably seconded her. Claes never
noticed the change which reduced the household living to the merest
necessaries. First he ceased to breakfast with the family; then he only
left his laboratory when dinner was ready; and at last, before he went
to bed, he would sit some hours in the parlor between his daughters
without saying a word to either of them; when he rose to go upstairs
they wished him good-night, and he allowed them mechanically to kiss
him on both cheeks. 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. Balthazar's rural estates, which yielded sixteen
thousand francs a year, and were worth about six hundred thousand, were
now encumbered by mortgages to the amount of three hundred thousand
francs; for, in order to recommence his researches, Claes had borrowed
a considerable sum of money. The rents were exactly enough to pay the
interest of the mortgages; but, with the improvidence of a man who
is the slave of an idea, he made over the income of his farm lands to
Marguerite for the expenses of the household, and the notary calculated
that three years would suffice to bring matters to a crisis, when the
law would s