her father, and if resistance was inevitable to resist him on her knees.  The abbe was dead, but Emmanuel held the money.  In their discussions about the management of this sum, the two young people drew closer together.  The poor father, brought to ruin, confessed his madness, and uttered the terrible despair of a beaten scientist.  To comfort him, Marguerite said that his debts would be paid with her money.  His face lit up.  “You have money!  Give it to me; I will make you rich.”  Once more the madness returned.

Emmanuel came with three thousand ducats in his pockets.  They were hiding them in the hollow column of a pedestal, when, looking up, Marguerite saw her father observing them.  “I heard gold,” he said, advancing.  To save her, Emmanuel lied.  He sinned against his conscience for her sake.  The money, he said belonged to him, and he had lent it to Marguerite.  When he was gone, Claes said:  “I must have that money.”

“If you take it,” answered Marguerite, “you will be a thief.”

He knelt to her; she would not relent.  He caressed her; she called God to look down upon them if he stole the money.  He rose, bade her a sorrowful farewell, and left the room.  Something warned her; she hurried after him, to find him with a pistol at his head.  “Take all I possess,” she cried.  Embracing her, he promised that if he failed this time he would deliver himself into her hands.

Time passed and the Absolute was not discovered.  A wealthy cousin of Claes, M. Conyncks, came to Douai in his travelling carriage, and soon after he and Marguerite journeyed to Paris.  When she returned, it was to announce that, through M. Conynck’s influence, Balthazar had been appointed receiver of taxes in Brittany, and must set out at once to take up the appointment.

“You drive me out of my own house!” he exclaimed, with anger.  At first he refused to go, furious and indignant; but she persisted, and he had to surrender.  He went with Lemulquinier to his laboratory for the last time.  The two old men were very sad as they released the gases and evaporated acids.

“Ah, look,” said Claes, pausing before a capsule connected with the wires of a battery; “if only we could watch out the end of this experiment!  Carbon and sulphur.  Crystallisation should take place; the carbon might certainly result in a crystal ...”

While Claes was in exile, fortune came to the family.  The son Gabriel, assisted by M. Conyncks, had made a large sum of money as the engineer of a canal.  Emmanuel de Solis had given Marguerite the fortune he inherited from ancestors in Spain.  Pierquin, who had turned his attention to Marguerite’s younger sister, had proved himself kind to the family.  Once again the Maison Claes was in prosperity, with pictures on its walls, and with handsome furniture in its state apartments.

When Conyncks and Marguerite went to fetch the father, they found him old and broken.  The child was greatly touched by his appearance, and questioned him alone.  She discovered that instead of saving money, he was heavily in debt, and that he had been seeking the Absolute as industriously in Brittany as in the attic of the Maison Claes.