a blue frock-coat.  He had trimmed his beard, combed and perfumed his hair, pared his nails, and washed his hands, all with such care that he was scarcely recognizable to those who had seen him lately.  Instead of an old man almost decrepit, his children, his wife, and the notary saw a Balthazar Claes who was forty years old, and whose courteous and affable presence was full of its former attractions.  The weariness and suffering betrayed by the thin face and the clinging of the skin to the bones, had in themselves a sort of charm.

“Good-evening, Pierquin,” said Monsieur Claes.

Once more a husband and a father, he took his youngest child from his wife’s lap and tossed him in the air.

“See that little fellow!” he exclaimed to the notary.  “Doesn’t such a pretty creature make you long to marry?  Take my word for it, my dear Pierquin, family happiness consoles a man for everything.  Up, up!” he cried, tossing Jean into the air; “down, down! up! down!”

The child laughed with all his heart as he went alternately to the ceiling and down to the carpet.  The mother turned away her eyes that she might not betray the emotion which the simple play caused her, —­simple apparently, but to her a domestic revolution.

“Let me see how you can walk,” said Balthazar, putting his son on the floor and throwing himself on a sofa near his wife.

The child ran to its father, attracted by the glitter of the gold buttons which fastened the breeches just above the slashed tops of his boots.

“You are a darling!” cried Balthazar, kissing him; “you are a Claes, you walk straight.  Well, Gabriel, how is Pere Morillon?” he said to his eldest son, taking him by the ear and twisting it.  “Are you struggling valiantly with your themes and your construing? have you taken sharp hold of mathematics?”

Then he rose, and went up to the notary with the affectionate courtesy that characterized him.

“My dear Pierquin,” he said, “perhaps you have something to say to me.”  He took his arm to lead him to the garden, adding, “Come and see my tulips.”

Madame Claes looked at her husband as he left the room, unable to repress the joy she felt in seeing him once more so young, so affable, so truly himself.  She rose, took her daughter round the waist and kissed her, exclaiming:—­

“My dear Marguerite, my darling child!  I love you better than ever to-day.”

“It is long since I have seen my father so kind,” answered the young girl.

Lemulquinier announced dinner.  To prevent Pierquin from offering her his arm, Madame Claes took that of her husband and led the way into the next room, the whole family following.