“No, do not swear, that you may not fail of your oath,” she said, interrupting him.  “You owed us your protection; we have been without it seven years.  Science is your life.  A great man should have neither wife nor children; he should tread alone the path of sacrifice.  His virtues are not the virtues of common men; he belongs to the universe, he cannot belong to wife or family; he sucks up the moisture of the earth about him, like a majestic tree—­and I, poor plant, I could not rise to the height of your life, I die at its feet.  I have waited for this last day to tell you these dreadful thoughts:  they came to me in the lightnings of desolation and anguish.  Oh, spare my children! let these words echo in your heart.  I cry them to you with my last breath.  The wife is dead, dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her joys.  Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long?  But those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my anguish, the mother still survives.  Spare them!  Spare my children!”

“Lemulquinier!” cried Claes in a voice of thunder.

The old man appeared.

“Go up and destroy all—­instruments, apparatus, everything!  Be careful, but destroy all.  I renounce Science,” he said to his wife.

“Too late,” she answered, looking at Lemulquinier.  “Marguerite!” she cried, feeling herself about to die.

Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she saw her mother’s eyes now glazing.

“Marguerite!” repeated the dying woman.

The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying bequest.  The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.

Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.  Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning:  the daughter judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his daughter an instrument of vengeance.  Though memories of the love with which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must ever hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his attendant genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion, denying him the strength to carry his repentance into action:  he feared himself.

When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the minds of all,—­the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.  The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to enter it.

CHAPTER X