The good people of Douai were not surprised that visitors were no longer
received at the House of Claes, and that Balthazar gave no more fetes on
the anniversary of his marriage. Madame Claes’s state of health seemed a
sufficient reason for the change, and the payment of her husband’s debts
put a stop to the current gossip; moreover, the political vicissitudes
to which Flanders was subjected, the war of the Hundred-days, and the
occupation of the Allied armies, put the chemist and his researches
completely out of people’s minds. During those two years Douai was so
often on the point of being taken, it was so constantly occupied either
by the French or by the enemy, so many foreigners came there, so many of
the country-people sought refuge within its walls, so many lives were
in peril, so many catastrophes occurred, that each man thought only of
himself.
The Abbe de Solis and his nephew, and the two Pierquins, doctor and
lawyer, were the only persons who now visited Madame Claes; for whom
the winter of 1814-1815 was a long and dreary death-scene. Her husband
rarely came to see her. It is true that after dinner he remained some
hours in the parlor, near her bed; but as she no longer had the strength
to keep up a conversation, he merely said a few words, invariably the
same, sat down, spoke no more, and a dreary silence settled down upon
the room. The monotony of this existence was broken only on the days
when the Abbe de Solis and his nephew passed the evening with Madame
Claes.
While the abbe played backgammon with Balthazar, Marguerite talked with
Emmanuel by the bedside of her mother, who smiled at their innocent joy,
not allowing them to see how painful and yet how soothing to her wounded
spirit were the fresh breezes of their virgin love, murmuring in fitful
words from heart to heart. The inflection of their voices, to them
so full of charm, to her was heart-breaking; a glance of mutual
understanding surprised between the two threw her, half-dead as she
was, back to the young and happy past which gave such bitterness to
the present. Emmanuel and Marguerite with intuitive delicacy of feeling
repressed the sweet half-childish play of love, lest it should hurt the
saddened woman whose wounds they instinctively divined.
No one has yet remarked that feelings have an existence of their own, a
nature which is developed by the circumstances that environ them, and in
which they are born; they bear a likeness to the places of their growth,
and keep the imprint of the ideas that influenced their development.
There are passions ardently conceived which remain ardent, like that of
Madame Claes for her husband: there are sentiments on which all life
has smiled; these retain their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time
of joy, seasons that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are
other loves, framed in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures
are painful, costly, burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or
blackened by despair. The love in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel,
as yet unknown to them for love, the sentiment that budded into life
beneath the gloomy arches of the picture-gallery, beside the stern old
abbe, in a still and silent moment, that love so grave and so discreet,
yet rich in tender depths, in secret delights that were luscious to the
taste as stolen grapes snatched from a corner of the vineyard, wore in
coming years the sombre browns and grays that surrounded the hour of its
birth.
Fearing to give expression to their feelings beside that bed of pain,
they unconsciously increased their happiness by a concentration which
deepened its imprint on their hearts. The devotion of the daughter,
shared by Emmanuel, happy in thus uniting himself with Marguerite and
becoming by anticipation the son of her mother, was their medium
of communication. Melancholy thanks from the lips of the young girl
supplanted the honeyed language of lovers; the sighing of their
hearts, surcharged with joy at some interchange of looks, was scarcely
distinguishable from the sighs wrung from them by the mother’s
sufferings. Their happy little moments of indirect avowal, of unuttered
promises, of smothered effusion, were like the allegories of Raphael
painted on a black ground. Each felt a certainty that neither avowed;
they knew the sun was shining over them, but they could not know what
wind might chase away the clouds that gathered about their heads. They
doubted the future; fearing that pain would ever follow them, they
stayed timidly among the shadows of the twilight, not daring to say to
each other, “Shall we end our days together?”
The tenderness which Madame Claes now testified for her children nobly
concealed much that she endeavored to hide from herself. Her children
caused her neither fear nor passionate emotion: they were her
comforters, but they were not her life: she lived by them; she died
through Balthazar. However painful her husband’s presence might be to
her, lost as he was for hours together in depths of thought from which
he looked at her without seeing her, it was only during those cruel
moments that she forgot her griefs. His indifference to the dying woman
would have seemed criminal to a stranger, but Madame Claes and her
daughters were accustomed to it; they knew his heart and they forgave
him. If, during the daytime, Josephine was seized by some sudden
illness, if she were worse and seemed near dying, Claes was the
only person in the house or in the town who remained ignorant of it.
Lemulquinier knew it, but neither the daughters, bound to silence by
their mother, nor Josephine herself let Balthazar know the danger of the
being he had once so passionately loved.
When his heavy step sounded in the gallery as he came to dinner, Madame
Claes was happy--she was about to see him! and she gathered up her
strength for that happiness. As he entered, the pallid face blushed
brightly and recovered for an instant the semblance of health. Balthazar
came to her bedside, took her hand, saw the misleading color on her
cheek, and to him she seemed well. When he asked, “My dear wife, how are
you to-day?” she answered, “Better, dear friend,” and made him think she
would be up and recovered on the morrow. His preoccupation was so great
that he accepted this reply, and believed the illness of which his wife
was dying a mere indisposition. Dying to the eyes of the world, in his
alone she was living.
A complete separation between husband and wife was the result of this
year. Claes slept in a distant chamber, got up early in the morning, and
shut himself into his laboratory or his study. Seeing his wife only in
presence of his daughters or of the two or three friends who came to
visit them, he lost the habit of communicating with her. These two
beings, formerly accustomed to think as one, no longer, unless at rare
intervals, enjoyed those moments of communion, of passionate unreserve
which feed the life of the heart; and finally there came a time when
even these rare pleasures ceased. Physical suffering was now a boon
to the poor woman, helping her to endure the void of separation, which
might have killed her had she been truly living. Her bodily pain became
so great that there were times when she was joyful in the thought that
he whom she loved was not a witness of it. She lay watching Balthazar
in the evening hours, and knowing him happy in his own way, she lived
in the happiness she had procured for him,--a shadowy joy, and yet it
satisfied her. She no longer asked herself if she were loved, she forced
herself to believe it; and she glided over that icy surface, not daring
to rest her weight upon it lest it should break and drown her soul in a
gulf of awful nothingness.
No events stirred the calm of this existence; the malady that was slowly
consuming Madame Claes added to the household stillness, and in this
condition of passive gloom the House of Claes reached the first weeks
of the year 1816. Pierquin, the lawyer, was destined, at the close of
February, to strike the death-blow of the fragile woman who, in the
words of the Abbe de Solis, was well-nigh without sin.
“Madame,” said Pierquin, seizing a moment when her daughters could not
hear the conversation, “Monsieur Claes has directed me to borrow three
hundred thousand francs on his property. You must do something to
protect the future of your children.”
Madame Claes clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the ceiling; then
she thanked the notary with a sad smile and a kindly motion of her head
which affected him.
His words were the stab that killed her. During that day she had yielded
herself up to sad reflections which swelled her heart; she was like the
wayfarer walking beside a precipice who loses his balance and a mere
pebble rolls him to the depth of the abyss he had so long and so
courageously skirted. When the notary left her, Madame Claes told
Marguerite to bring writing materials; then she gathered up her
remaining strength to write her last wishes. Several times she paused
and looked at her daughter. The hour of confidence had come.
Marguerite’s management of the household since her mother’s illness had
amply fulfilled the dying woman’s hopes that Madame Claes was able to
look upon the future of the family without absolute despair, confident
that she herself would live again in this strong and loving angel. Both
women felt, no doubt, that sad and mutual confidences must now be made
between them; the daughter looked at the mother, the mother at the
daughter, tears flowing from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes
rested from her writing, Marguerite said: “Mother?” then she dropped as
if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask
the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal
the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she
might not see the superscription.
“You can read it, my child,” said the mother, in a heart-rending voice.
The young girl read the words, “To my daughter Marguerite.”
“We will talk to each other after I have rested awhile,” said Madame
Claes, putting the letter under her pillow.
Then she fell back as if exhausted by the effort, and slept for several
hours. When she woke, her two daughters and her two sons were kneeling
by her bed and praying. It was Thursday. Gabriel and Jean had been
brought from school by Emmanuel de Solis, who for the last six months
was professor of history and philosophy.
“Dear children, we must part!” she cried. “You have never forsaken me,
never! and he who--”
She stopped.
“Monsieur Emmanuel,” said Marguerite, seeing the pallor on her mother’s
face, “go to my father, and tell him mamma is worse.”
Young de Solis went to the door of the laboratory and persuaded
Lemulquinier to make Balthazar come and speak to him. On hearing of the
urgent request of the young man, Claes answered, “I will come.”
“Emmanuel,” said Madame Claes when he returned to her, “take my
sons away, and bring your uncle here. It is time to give me the last
sacraments, and I wish to receive them from his hand.”
When she was alone with her daughters she made a sign to Marguerite, who
understood her and sent Felicie away.
“I have something to say to you myself, dear mamma,” said Marguerite
who, not believing her mother so ill as she really was, increased
the wound Pierquin had given. “I have had no money for the household
expenses during the last ten days; I owe six months’ wages to the
servants. Twice I have tried to ask my father for money, but did not
dare to do so. You don’t know, perhaps, that all the pictures in the
gallery have been sold, and all the wines in the cellar?”
“He never told me!” exclaimed Madame Claes. “My God! thou callest me to
thyself in time! My poor children! what will become of them?”
She made a fervent prayer, which brought the fires of repentance to her
eyes.
“Marguerite,” she resumed, drawing the letter from her pillow, “here is
a paper which you must not open or read until a time, after my death,
when some great disaster has overtaken you; when, in short, you are
without the means of living. My dear Marguerite, love your father, but
take care of your brothers and your sister. In a few days, in a few
hours perhaps, you will be the head of this household. Be economical.
Should you find yourself opposed to the wishes of your father,--and it
may so happen, because he has spent vast sums in searching for a secret
whose discovery is to bring glory and wealth to his family, and he will
no doubt need money, perhaps he may demand it of you,--should that time
come, treat him with the tenderness of a daughter, strive to reconcile
the interests of which you will be the sole protector with the duty
which you owe to a father, to a great man who sacrificed his happiness
and his life to the glory of his family; he can only do wrong in act,
his intentions are noble, his heart is full of love; you will see him
once more kind and affectionate--YOU! Marguerite, it is my duty to say
these words to you on the borders of the grave. If you wish to soften
the anguish of my death, promise me, my child, to take my place beside
your father; to cause him no grief; never to reproach him; never to
condemn him. Be a gentle, considerate guardian of the home until--his
work accomplished--he is again the master of his family.”
“I understand you, dear mother,” said Marguerite, kissing the swollen
eyelids of the dying woman. “I will do as you wish.”
“Do not marry, my darling, until Gabriel can succeed you in the
management of the property and the household. If you married, your
husband might not share your feelings, he might bring trouble into the
family and disturb your father’s life.”
Marguerite looked at her mother and said, “Have you nothing else to say
to me about my marriage?”
“Can you hesitate, my child?” cried the dying woman in alarm.
“No,” the daughter answered; “I promise to obey you.”
“Poor girl! I did not sacrifice myself for you,” said the mother,
shedding hot tears. “Yet I ask you to sacrifice yourself for all.
Happiness makes us selfish. Be strong; preserve your own good sense to
guard others who as yet have none. Act so that your brothers and your
sister may not reproach my memory. Love your father, and do not oppose
him--too much.”
She laid her head on her pillow and said no more; her strength was
gone; the inward struggle between the Wife and the Mother had been too
violent.
A few moments later the clergy came, preceded by the Abbe de Solis,
and the parlor was filled by the children and the household. When the
ceremony was about to begin, Madame Claes, awakened by her confessor,
looked about her and not seeing Balthazar said quickly,--
“Where is my husband?”
Those words--summing up, as it were, her life and her death--were
uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in
spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and
through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the door of the laboratory.
“Monsieur, madame is dying; they are waiting for you, to administer the
last sacraments,” she cried with the violence of indignation.
“I am coming,” answered Balthazar.
Lemulquinier came down a moment later, and said his master was following
him. Madame Claes’s eyes never left the parlor door, but her husband
did not appear until the ceremony was over. When at last he entered,
Josephine colored and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Were you trying to decompose nitrogen?” she said to him with an angelic
tenderness which made the spectators quiver.
“I have done it!” he cried joyfully; “Nitrogen contains oxygen and a
substance of the nature of imponderable matter, which is apparently the
principle of--”
A murmur of horror interrupted his words and brought him to his senses.
“What did they tell me?” he demanded. “Are you worse? What is the
matter?”
“This is the matter, monsieur,” whispered the Abbe de Solis, indignant
at his conduct; “your wife is dying, and you have killed her.”
Without waiting for an answer the abbe took the arm of his nephew and
went out followed by the family, who accompanied him to the court-yard.
Balthazar stood as if thunderstruck; he looked at his wife, and a few
tears dropped from his eyes.
“You are dying, and I have killed you!” he said. “What does he mean?”
“My husband,” she answered, “I only lived in your love, and you have
taken my life away from me; but you knew not what you did.”
“Leave us,” said Claes to his children, who now re-entered the room.
“Have I for one moment ceased to love you?” he went on, sitting down
beside his wife, and taking her hands and kissing them.
“My friend, I do not blame you. You made me happy--too happy, for I have
not been able to bear the contrast between our early married life, so
full of joy, and these last days, so desolate, so empty, when you are
not yourself. The life of the heart, like the life of the body, has its
functions. For six years you have been dead to love, to the family, to
all that was once our happiness. I will not speak of our early married
days; such joys must cease in the after-time of life, but they ripen
into fruits which feed the soul,--confidence unlimited, the tender
habits of affection: you have torn those treasures from me! I go in
time: we live together no longer; you hide your thoughts and actions
from me. How is it that you fear me? Have I ever given you one word,
one look, one gesture of reproach? And yet, you have sold your last
pictures, you have sold even the wine in your cellar, you are borrowing
money on your property, and have said no word to me. Ah! I go from
life weary of life. If you are doing wrong, if you delude yourself in
following the unattainable, have I not shown you that my love could
share your faults, could walk beside you and be happy, though you led me
in the paths of crime? You loved me too well,--that was my glory; it is
now my death. Balthazar, my illness has lasted long; it began on the
day when here, in this place where I am about to die, you showed me that
Science was more to you than Family. And now the end has come; your wife
is dying, and your fortune lost. Fortune and wife were yours,--you could
do what you willed with your own; but on the day of my death my property
goes to my children, and you cannot touch it; what will then become of
you? I am telling you the truth; I owe it to you. Dying eyes see far;
when I am gone will anything outweigh that cursed passion which is now
your life? If you have sacrificed your wife, your children will count
but little in the scale; for I must be just and own you loved me
above all. Two millions and six years of toil you have cast into the
gulf,--and what have you found?”
At these words Claes grasped his whitened head in his hands and hid his
face.
“Humiliation for yourself, misery for your children,” continued the
dying woman. “You are called in derision ‘Claes the alchemist’; soon
it will be ‘Claes the madman.’ For myself, I believe in you. I know
you great and wise; I know your genius: but to the vulgar eye genius is
mania. Fame is a sun that lights the dead; living, you will be unhappy
with the unhappiness of great minds, and your children will be ruined.
I go before I see your fame, which might have brought me consolation for
my lost happiness. Oh, Balthazar! make my death less bitter to me, let
me be certain that my children will not want for bread--Ah, nothing,
nothing, not even you, can calm my fears.”
“I swear,” said Claes, “to--”
“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.