“Enough,” said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed her father’s mind.

A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to him,—­just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to whom the public holidays are so much lost time.  Here were his hopes; here the heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe the breath of life.  This alliance of places and things with men, which is so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of science and students.  To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science, to abandon the Problem, —­it was death.

Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour.  The former scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in which her father was placed.  She came and went restlessly about the parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.

At last Balthazar returned.  As he crossed the courtyard Marguerite studied his face anxiously and could see nothing but an expression of stormy grief.  When he entered the parlor she went towards him to bid him good-morning; he caught her affectionately round the waist, pressed her to his heart, kissed her brow, and whispered,—­

“I have been to get my passport.”

The tones of his voice, his resigned look, his feeble movements, crushed the poor girl’s heart; she turned away her head to conceal her tears, and then, unable to repress them, she went into the garden to weep at her ease.  During breakfast, Balthazar showed the cheerfulness of a man who had come to a decision.

“So we are to start for Bretagne, uncle,” he said to Monsieur Conyncks.  “I have always wished to go there.”

“It is a place where one can live cheaply,” replied the old man.

“Is our father going away?” cried Felicie.

Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.

“You must leave him with me to-day,” said Balthazar, putting his son beside him.  “I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye.”

Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head.  It was a gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress both thoughts and tears.  This was not an absence, it was an exile.  All instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at Balthazar’s age.  At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm; he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the tyrannous power of genius had forced him to commit.  When the evening was over, and father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the first years of his fatherhood, held out his hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness that was mingled with despair,—­