“Is it to hear me talk of chemistry that you have made yourself so coquettishly delightful?”

“Dear friend, a confidence which puts me in your inner heart is the greatest of all pleasures for me; is it not a communion of souls which gives birth to the highest happiness of earth?  Your love comes back to me not lessened, pure; I long to know what dream has had the power to keep it from me so long.  Yes, I am more jealous of a thought than of all the women in the world.  Love is vast, but it is not infinite, while Science has depths unfathomed, to which I will not let you go alone.  I hate all that comes between us.  If you win the glory for which you strive, I must be unhappy; it will bring you joy, while I—­I alone—­should be the giver of your happiness.”

“No, my angel, it was not an idea, not a thought; it was a man that first led me into this glorious path.”

“A man!” she cried in terror.

“Do you remember, Pepita, the Polish officer who stayed with us in 1809?”

“Do I remember him!” she exclaimed; “I am often annoyed because my memory still recalls those eyes, like tongues of fire darting from coals of hell, those hollows above the eyebrows, that broad skull stripped of hair, the upturned moustache, the angular, worn face!  —­What awful impassiveness in his bearing!  Ah! surely if there had been a room in any inn I would never have allowed him to sleep here.”

“That Polish gentleman,” resumed Balthazar, “was named Adam de Wierzchownia.  When you left us alone that evening in the parlor, we happened by chance to speak of chemistry.  Compelled by poverty to give up the study of that science, he had become a soldier.  It was, I think, by means of a glass of sugared water that we recognized each other as adepts.  When I ordered Mulquinier to bring the sugar in pieces, the captain gave a start of surprise.  ’Have you studied chemistry?’ he asked.  ‘With Lavoisier,’ I answered.  ’You are happy in being rich and free,’ he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came the sigh of a man,—­one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated, not to be expressed in words.  He ended his sentence with a look that startled me.  After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden.  There he had sought consolation for his country’s fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had always felt an irresistible vocation.  ’And I see you recognize as I do,’ he added, ’that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder, each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the same qualitative result.’

“He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye, he said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose general meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture, which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer strikes the anvil.  I will tell you briefly the arguments he used, which were to me like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah’s tongue; for my studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their full bearing.