Though Balthazar knew his wife’s chamber well, his forgetfulness of material things had lately been so complete that he felt a thrill of soft emotion when he entered it, as though he saw it for the first time.  The proud gaiety of a triumphant woman glowed in the splendid colors of the tulips which rose from the long throats of Chinese vases judiciously placed about the room, and sparkled in the profusion of lights whose effect can only be compared to a joyous burst of martial music.  The gleam of the wax candles cast a mellow sheen on the coverings of pearl-gray silk, whose monotony was relieved by touches of gold, soberly distributed here and there on a few ornaments, and by the varied colors of the tulips, which were like sheaves of precious stones.  The secret of this choice arrangement—­it was he, ever he!  Josephine could not tell him in words more eloquent that he was now and ever the mainspring of her joys and woes.

The aspect of that chamber put the soul deliciously at ease, cast out sad thoughts, and left a sense of pure and equable happiness.  The silken coverings, brought from China, gave forth a soothing perfume that penetrated the system without fatiguing it.  The curtains, carefully drawn, betrayed a desire for solitude, a jealous intention of guarding the sound of every word, of hiding every look of the reconquered husband.  Madame Claes, wearing a dressing-robe of muslin, which was trimmed by a long pelerine with falls of lace that came about her throat, and adorned with her beautiful black hair, which was exquisitely glossy and fell on either side of her forehead like a raven’s wing, went to draw the tapestry portiere that hung before the door and allowed no sound to penetrate the chamber from without.

CHAPTER VI

At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes.  Woman’s greatest charm lies in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments.  Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction?  When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward.  It was calling him to help her.  Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa.  This was what she wanted.

“You promised me,” she said, taking his hand which she held between her own magnetic palms, “to tell me the secret of your researches.  Admit, dear friend, that I am worthy to know it, since I have had the courage to study a science condemned by the Church that I might be able to understand you.  I am curious; hide nothing from me.  Tell me first how it happened, that you rose one morning anxious and oppressed, when over night I had left you happy.”