“The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion, Pepita,” said Claes, deeply moved.

He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered the room and wished him good-morning.  Madame Claes lowered her eyes and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children, whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to give vent to the joy that choked him.

From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.  The future of her children, their father’s credit, were two motives as powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes.  After the diamonds were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the unhappy woman never knew another hour’s peace of mind.  The demon of Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation, and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit and aggravated her doubts and fears.  Sometimes, blaming herself for compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with terror at the chimney of the laboratory.  If the smoke were rising, an expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and feelings raged in her heart and mind.  She beheld her children’s future fleeing in that smoke, but—­was she not saving their father’s life? was it not her first duty to make him happy?  This last thought calmed her for a moment.

She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced.  Her sufferings were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the building,—­a living death of untold miseries.  Lemulquinier became to her a species of barometer:  if she heard him whistle as he laid the breakfast-table or the dinner-table, she guessed that Balthazar’s experiments were satisfactory, and there were prospects of a coming success; if, on the other hand, the man were morose and gloomy, she looked at him and trembled,—­Balthazar must surely be dissatisfied.  Mistress and valet ended by understanding each other, notwithstanding the proud reserve of the one and the reluctant submission of the other.