This letter changed all Marguerite’s travelling plans, and she immediately took the shortest road to Douai.  Her new fortune and her past savings enabled her to pay off Balthazar’s debts; but she wished to do more, she wished to obey her mother’s last injunction and save him from sinking dishonored to the grave.  She alone could exercise enough ascendancy over the old man to keep him from completing the work of ruin, at an age when no fruitful toil could be expected from his enfeebled faculties.  But she was also anxious to control him without wounding his susceptibilities,—­not wishing to imitate the children of Sophocles, in case her father neared the scientific result for which he had sacrificed so much.

Monsieur and Madame de Solis reached Flanders in the last days of September, 1831, and arrived at Douai during the morning.  Marguerite ordered the coachman to drive to the house in the rue de Paris, which they found closed.  The bell was loudly rung, but no one answered.  A shopkeeper left his door-step, to which he had been attracted by the noise of the carriages; others were at their windows to enjoy a sight of the return of the de Solis family to whom all were attached, enticed also by a vague curiosity as to what would happen in that house on Marguerite’s return to it.  The shopkeeper told Monsieur de Solis’s valet that old Claes had gone out an hour before, and that Monsieur Lemulquinier was no doubt taking him to walk on the ramparts.

Marguerite sent for a locksmith to force the door,—­glad to escape a scene in case her father, as Felicie had written, should refuse to admit her into the house.  Meantime Emmanuel went to meet the old man and prepare him for the arrival of his daughter, despatching a servant to notify Monsieur and Madame Pierquin.

When the door was opened, Marguerite went directly to the parlor.  Horror overcame her and she trembled when she saw the walls as bare as if a fire had swept over them.  The glorious carved panellings of Van Huysum and the portrait of the great Claes had been sold.  The dining-room was empty:  there was nothing in it but two straw chairs and a common deal table, on which Marguerite, terrified, saw two plates, two bowls, two forks and spoons, and the remains of a salt herring which Claes and his servant had evidently just eaten.  In a moment she had flown through her father’s portion of the house, every room of which exhibited the same desolation as the parlor and dining-room.  The idea of the Alkahest had swept like a conflagration through the building.  Her father’s bedroom had a bed, one chair, and one table, on which stood a miserable pewter candlestick with a tallow candle burned almost to the socket.  The house was so completely stripped that not so much as a curtain remained at the windows.  Every object of the smallest value,—­everything, even the kitchen utensils, had been sold.