heir missiles at the
old men, just as the Comte de Solis, accompanied by Pierquin's servants,
appeared at the farther end of the square. The latter were too late,
however, to save the old man and his valet from being pelted with mud.
The shock was given. Balthazar, whose faculties had been preserved by a
chastity of spirit natural to students absorbed in a quest of discovery
that annihilates all passions, now suddenly divined, by the phenomenon
of introsusception, the true meaning of the scene: his decrepit body
could not sustain the frightful reaction he underwent in his feelings,
and he fell, struck with paralysis, into the arms of Lemulquinier, who
brought him to his home on a shutter, attended by his sons-in-law and
their servants. No power could prevent the population of Douai from
following the body of the old man to the door of his house, where
Felicie and her children, Jean, Marguerite, and Gabriel, whom his sister
had sent for, were waiting to receive him.

The arrival of the old man gave rise to a frightful scene; he struggled
less against the assaults of death than against the horror of seeing
that his children had entered the house and penetrated the secret of
his impoverished life. A bed was at once made up in the parlor and every
care bestowed upon the stricken man, whose condition, towards evening,
allowed hopes that his life might be preserved. The paralysis, though
skilfully treated, kept him for some time in a state of semi-childhood;
and when by degrees it relaxed, the tongue was found to be especially
affected, perhaps because the old man's anger had concentrated all
his forces upon it at the moment when he was about to apostrophize the
children.

This incident roused a general indignation throughout the town. By a
law, up to that time unknown, which guides the affects of the masses,
this event brought back all hearts to Monsieur Claes. He became once
more a great man; he excited the admiration and received the good-will
that a few hours earlier were denied to him. Men praised his patience,
his strength of will, his courage, his genius. The authorities wished
to arrest all those who had a share in dealing him this blow. Too
late,--the evil was done! The Claes family were the first to beg that
the matter might be allowed to drop.

Marguerite ordered furniture to be brought into the parlor, and the
denuded walls to be hung with silk; and when, a few days after his
seizure, the old father recovered h