is faculties and found himself once
more in a luxurious room surrounded by all that makes life easy, he
tried to express his belief that his daughter Marguerite had returned.
At that moment she entered the room. When Balthazar caught sight of her
he colored, and his eyes grew moist, though the tears did not fall. He
was able to press his daughter's hand with his cold fingers, putting
into that pressure all the thoughts, all the feelings he no longer had
the power to utter. There was something holy and solemn in that farewell
of the brain which still lived, of the heart which gratitude revived.
Worn out by fruitless efforts, exhausted in the long struggle with the
gigantic problem, desperate perhaps at the oblivion which awaited his
memory, this giant among men was about to die. His children surrounded
him with respectful affection; his dying eyes were cheered with images
of plenty and the touching picture of his prosperous and noble family.
His every look--by which alone he could manifest his feelings--was
unchangeably affectionate; his eyes acquired such variety of expression
that they had, as it were, a language of light, easy to comprehend.

Marguerite paid her father's debts, and restored a modern splendor to
the House of Claes which removed all outward signs of decay. She never
left the old man's bedside, endeavoring to divine his every thought and
accomplish his slightest wish.

Some months went by with those alternations of better and worse which
attend the struggle of life and death in old people; every morning his
children came to him and spent the day in the parlor, dining by his
bedside and only leaving him when he went to sleep for the night. The
occupation which gave him most pleasure, among the many with which his
family sought to enliven him, was the reading of newspapers, to which
the political events then occurring gave great interest. Monsieur Claes
listened attentively as Monsieur de Solis read them aloud beside his
bed.

Towards the close of the year 1832, Balthazar passed an extremely
critical night, during which Monsieur Pierquin, the doctor, was summoned
by the nurse, who was greatly alarmed at the sudden change which took
place in the patient. For the rest of the night the doctor remained to
watch him, fearing he might at any moment expire in the throes of inward
convulsion, whose effects were like those of a last agony.

The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his
paral