ysis; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a
sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed
an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood
out in drops upon his brow. In the morning when his children came to his
bedside and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death
made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his usual
satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel, instigated by
the doctor, hastened to open the newspaper to try if the usual reading
might not relieve the inward crisis in which Balthazar was evidently
struggling. As he unfolded the sheet he saw the words, "DISCOVERY OF THE
ABSOLUTE,"--which startled him, and he read a paragraph to Marguerite
concerning a sale made by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the
secret of the Absolute. Though Emmanuel read in a low voice, and
Marguerite signed to him to omit the passage, Balthazar heard it.

Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his
frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that
fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were
illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and
rendered it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered
with a piercing cry the famous word of Archimedes, "EUREKA!"--I have
found.

He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and
died, uttering an awful moan,--his convulsed eyes expressing to the
last, when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to
Science the secret of an Enigma whose veil was rent away,--too late!--by
the fleshless fingers of Death.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Note: The Alkahest is also known as The Quest of the Absolute and is
referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.

Casa-Real, Duc de
The Quest of the Absolute
A Marriage Settlement

Chiffreville, Monsieur and Madame
Cesar Birotteau
The Quest of the Absolute

Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
The Quest of the Absolute
A Marriage Settlement

Protez and Chiffreville
The Quest of the Absolute
Cesar Birotteau

Savaron de Savarus
The Quest of the Absolute
Albert Savarus

Savarus, Albert Savaron de
The Quest of the Abso