your furnace, turn it into smoke’; and I should laugh to see it float away in vapor.  Were you poor, I would beg without shame for the coal to light your furnace.  Oh! could my body yield your hateful Alkahest, I would fling myself upon those fires with joy, since your glory, your delight is in that unfound secret.  But our children, Claes, our children! what will become of them if you do not soon discover this hellish thing?  Do you know why Pierquin came to-day?  He came for thirty thousand francs, which you owe and cannot pay.  I told him that you had the money, so that I might spare you the mortification of his questions; but to get it I must sell our family silver.”

She saw her husband’s eyes grow moist, and she flung herself despairingly at his feet, raising up to him her supplicating hands.

“My friend,” she cried, “refrain awhile from these researches; let us economize, let us save the money that may enable you to take them up hereafter,—­if, indeed, you cannot renounce this work.  Oh!  I do not condemn it; I will heat your furnaces if you ask it; but I implore you, do not reduce our children to beggary.  Perhaps you cannot love them, Science may have consumed your heart; but oh! do not bequeath them a wretched life in place of the happiness you owe them.  Motherhood has sometimes been too weak a power in my heart; yes, I have sometimes wished I were not a mother, that I might be closer to your soul, your life!  And now, to stifle my remorse, must I plead the cause of my children before you, and not my own?”

Her hair fell loose and floated over her shoulders, her eyes shot forth her feelings as though they had been arrows.  She triumphed over her rival.  Balthazar lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and knelt at her feet.

“Have I caused you such grief?” he said, in the tone of a man waking from a painful dream.

“My poor Claes! yes, and you will cause me more, in spite of yourself,” she said, passing her hand over his hair.  “Sit here beside me,” she continued, pointing to the sofa.  “Ah!  I can forget it all now, now that you come back to us; all can be repaired—­but you will not abandon me again? say that you will not!  My noble husband, grant me a woman’s influence on your heart, that influence which is so needful to the happiness of suffering artists, to the troubled minds of great men.  You may be harsh to me, angry with me if you will, but let me check you a little for your good.  I will never abuse the power if you will grant it.  Be famous, but be happy too.  Do not love Chemistry better than you love us.  Hear me, we will be generous; we will let Science share your heart; but oh! my Claes, be just; let us have our half.  Tell me, is not my disinterestedness sublime?”

She made him smile.  With the marvellous art such women possess, she carried the momentous question into the regions of pleasantry where women reign.  But though she seemed to laugh, her heart was violently contracted and could not easily recover the quiet even action that was habitual to it.  And yet, as she saw in the eyes of Balthazar the rebirth of a love which was once her glory, the full return of a power she thought she had lost, she said to him with a smile:—­