On his return, the old man brightened and became glad.  The ancient home gave him joy.  He embraced his children, looked around the happy house of his fathers, and exclaimed:  “Ah, Josephine, if only you were here to admire our Marguerite!” The marriages of Marguerite and Felicie, the younger sister, were hurried forward.  During the reading of the contracts Lemulquinier suddenly burst into the room, crying:  “Monsieur!  Monsieur!”

Claes whispered to his daughter that the servant had lent him all his savings—­20,000 francs—­and had doubtless come to claim them on learning that the master was once more a rich man.  But Lemulquinier cried:  “Monsieur!  Monsieur!”

“Well?” demanded Claes.

In the trembling hand of the old servant lay a diamond.  Claes rushed towards him.

“I went to the laboratory,” began the servant—­Claes looked up at him quickly, as though to say:  “You were the first to go there!”—­“and I found in the capsule we left behind us this diamond!  The battery has done it without our help!”

“Forgive me!” cried Claes, turning to his children and his guests.  “This will drive me mad!  Cursed exile!  God has worked in my laboratory, and I was not there to see!  A miracle has taken place!  I might have seen it—­I have missed it for ever!” Suddenly he checked, and advancing to Marguerite, presented her with the diamond.  “My angel,” he said gently, “this belongs to you.”  Then, to the notary:  “Let us proceed.”

V.—­Discovery of the Absolute

Happiness reigned in the Maison Claes, Balthazar conducted a few but inexpensive experiments, and surrendered himself more and more to the happiness of home life.  It was as if the devil had been exorcised.  The death of relatives presently carried Emmanuel and Marguerite to Spain, and their return was delayed by the birth of a child.  When they did arrive in Flanders, one morning towards the end of September, they found the house in the Rue de Paris shut up, and a ring at the bell brought no one to open the door.  A shopkeeper near at hand said that M. Claes had left the house with Lemulquinier about an hour ago.  Emmanuel went in search of them, while a locksmith opened the door of the Maison Claes.  The house was as if the Absolute in the form of fire had passed through all its rooms.  Pictures, furniture, carpets, hangings, carvings—­all were swept clean away.  Marguerite wept as she looked about her, and forgave her father.  She went downstairs to await his coming.  How he must have suffered in this bare house!  Fear filled her heart.  Had his reason failed him?  Should she see him enter—­a tottering and enfeebled old man, broken by the sufferings which he had borne so proudly for science?  As she waited, the past rose before her eyes—­the long past of struggle against their enemy, the Absolute; the long past, when she was a child, and her mother had been now so joyous and now so sorrowful.