,--everything, even the
kitchen utensils, had been sold.

Moved by that feeling of curiosity which never entirely leaves us even
in moments of misfortune, Marguerite entered Lemulquinier's chamber and
found it as bare as that of his master. In a half-opened table-drawer
she found a pawnbroker's ticket for the old servant's watch which he had
pledged some days before. She ran to the laboratory and found it filled
with scientific instruments, the same as ever. Then she returned to her
own appartement and ordered the door to be broken open--her father had
respected it!

Marguerite burst into tears and forgave her father all. In the midst
of his devastating fury he had stopped short, restrained by paternal
feeling and the gratitude he owed to his daughter! This proof of
tenderness, coming to her at a moment when despair had reached its
climax, brought about in Marguerite's soul one of those moral reactions
against which the coldest hearts are powerless. She returned to the
parlor to wait her father's arrival, in a state of anxiety that was
cruelly aggravated by doubt and uncertainty. In what condition was she
about to see him? Ruined, decrepit, suffering, enfeebled by the fasts
his pride compelled him to undergo? Would he have his reason? Tears
flowed unconsciously from her eyes as she looked about the desecrated
sanctuary. The images of her whole life, her past efforts, her useless
precautions, her childhood, her mother happy and unhappy,--all, even her
little Joseph smiling on that scene of desolation, all were parts of a
poem of unutterable melancholy.

Marguerite foresaw an approaching misfortune, yet she little expected
the catastrophe that was to close her father's life,--that life at once
so grand and yet so miserable.

The condition of Monsieur Claes was no secret in the community. To the
lasting shame of men, there were not in all Douai two hearts generous
enough to do honor to the perseverance of this man of genius. In the
eyes of the world Balthazar was a man to be condemned, a bad father
who had squandered six fortunes, millions, who was actually seeking the
philosopher's stone in the nineteenth century, this enlightened century,
this sceptical century, this century!--etc. They calumniated his
purposes and branded him with the name of "alchemist," casting up to
him in mockery that he was trying to make gold. Ah! what eulogies are
uttered on this great century of ours, in which, as in all others,
genius is s