furniture is made from Greek models; wherever you go you see helmets, lances, shields, and bows and arrows!  Everybody is rebuilding his house, selling his old furniture, melting up his silver dishes, or exchanging them for Sevres porcelain,—­which does not compare with either old Dresden or with Chinese ware.  Oh! as for me, I’m Flemish to the core; my heart actually bleeds to see the coppersmiths buying up our beautiful inlaid furniture for the mere value of the wood and the metal.  The fact is, society wants to change its skin.  Everything is being sacrificed, even the old methods of art.  When people insist on going so fast, nothing is conscientiously done.  During my last visit to Paris I was taken to see the pictures in the Louvre.  On my word of honor, they are mere screen-painting,—­no depth, no atmosphere; the painters were actually afraid to put colors on their canvas.  And it is they who talk of overturning our ancient school of art!  Ah, bah!—­”

“Our old masters,” replied Balthazar, “studied the combination of colors and their endurance by submitting them to the action of sun and rain.  You are right enough, however; the material resources of art are less cultivated in these days than formerly.”

Madame Claes was not listening to the conversation.  The notary’s remark that porcelain dinner-services were now the fashion, gave her the brilliant idea of selling a quantity of heavy silver-ware which she had inherited from her brother,—­hoping to be able thus to pay off the thirty thousand francs which her husband owed.

“Ha! ha!” Balthazar was saying to Pierquin when Madame Claes’s mind returned to the conversation, “so they are discussing my work in Douai, are they?”

“Yes,” replied the notary, “every one is asking what it is you spend so much money on.  Only yesterday I heard the chief-justice deploring that a man like you should be searching for the Philosopher’s stone.  I ventured to reply that you were too wise not to know that such a scheme was attempting the impossible, too much of a Christian to take God’s work out of his hands; and, like every other Claes, too good a business man to spend your money for such befooling quackeries.  Still, I admit that I share the regret people feel at your absence from society.  You might as well not live here at all.  Really, madame, you would have been delighted had you heard the praises showered on Monsieur Claes and on you.”

“You acted like a faithful friend in repelling imputations whose least evil is to make me ridiculous,” said Balthazar.  “Ha! so they think me ruined?  Well, my dear Pierquin, two months hence I shall give a fete in honor of my wedding-day whose magnificence will get me back the respect my dear townsmen bestow on wealth.”

Madame Claes colored deeply.  For two years the anniversary had been forgotten.  Like madmen whose faculties shine at times with unwonted brilliancy, Balthazar was never more gracious and delightful in his tenderness than at this moment.  He was full of attention to his children, and his conversation had the charms of grace, and wit, and pertinence.  This return of fatherly feeling, so long absent, was certainly the truest fete he could give his wife, for whom his looks and words expressed once more that unbroken sympathy of heart for heart which reveals to each a delicious oneness of sentiment.