“Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder,” said
Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. “We were
just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap
of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he’s almost in the shoes
of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT,” he said to Josette,
clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, “of getting hold of the
Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about
notes of hand.”
“Well, pay them yourself,” said Martha, “out of your wages.”
“Where’s the butter for my bread?” said Lemulquinier to the cook.
“Where’s the money to buy it?” she answered, sharply. “Come, old
villain, if you make gold in that devil’s kitchen of yours, why don’t
you make butter? ‘Twouldn’t be half so difficult, and you could sell it
in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The
young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to
be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won’t spend more than one
hundred francs a month for the whole household. There’s only one dinner
for all. If you want dainties you’ve got your furnaces upstairs where
you fricassee pearls till there’s nothing else talked of in town. Get
your roast chickens up there.”
Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.
“He will go and buy something to eat with his own money,” said Martha;
“all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn’t he stingy, the old
scarecrow!”
“Starve him! that’s the only way to manage him,” said Josette. “For a
week past he hasn’t rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the
present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on
them, I can tell him that.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Martha, “I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
wizard of a father would swallow the house at a gulp without asking
a Christian blessing, the old sorcerer! In my country he’d be burned
alive; but people here have no more religion than the Moors in Africa.”
Marguerite could scarcely stifle her sobs as she came through the
gallery. She reached her room, took out her mother’s letter, and read as
follows:--
My Child,--If God so wills, my spirit will be within your heart
when you read these words, the last I shall ever write; they are
full of love for my dear ones, left at the mercy of a demon whom I
have not been able to resist. When you read these words he will
have taken your last crust, just as he took my life and squandered
my love. You know, my darling, if I loved your father: I die
loving him less, for I take precautions against him which I never
could have practised while living. Yes, in the depths of my coffin
I shall have kept a resource for the day when some terrible
misfortune overtakes you. If when that day comes you are reduced
to poverty, or if your honor is in question, my child, send for
Monsieur de Solis, should he be living,--if not, for his nephew,
our good Emmanuel; they hold one hundred and seventy thousand
francs which are yours and will enable you to live.
If nothing shall have subdued his passion; if his children prove
no stronger barrier than my happiness has been, and cannot stop
his criminal career,--leave him, leave your father, that you may
live. I could not forsake him; I was bound to him. You,
Marguerite, you must save the family. I absolve you for all you
may do to defend Gabriel and Jean and Felicie. Take courage; be
the guardian angel of the Claes. Be firm,--I dare not say be
pitiless; but to repair the evil already done you must keep some
means at hand. On the day when you read this letter, regard
yourself as ruined already, for nothing will stay the fury of that
passion which has torn all things from me.
My child, remember this: the truest love is to forget your heart.
Even though you be forced to deceive your father, your
dissimulation will be blessed; your actions, however blamable they
may seem, will be heroic if taken to protect the family. The
virtuous Monsieur de Solis tells me so; and no conscience was ever
purer or more enlightened than his. I could never have had the
courage to speak these words to you, even with my dying breath.
And yet, my daughter, be respectful, be kind in the dreadful
struggle. Resist him, but love him; deny him gently. My hidden
tears, my inward griefs will be known only when I am dead. Kiss my
dear children in my name when the hour comes and you are called
upon to protect them.
May God and the saints be with you!
Josephine.
To this letter was added an acknowledgment from the Messieurs de Solis,
uncle and nephew, who thereby bound themselves to place the money
entrusted to them by Madame Claes in the hands of whoever of her
children should present the paper.
“Martha,” cried Marguerite to the duenna, who came quickly; “go to
Monsieur Emmanuel de Solis, and ask him to come to me.--Noble, discreet
heart! he never told me,” she thought; “though all my griefs and cares
are his, he never told me!”
Emmanuel came before Martha could get back.
“You have kept a secret from me,” she said, showing him her mother’s
letter.
Emmanuel bent his head.
“Marguerite, are you in great trouble?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered; “be my support,--you, whom my mother calls ‘our
good Emmanuel.’” She showed him the letter, unable to repress her joy in
knowing that her mother approved her choice.
“My blood and my life were yours on the morrow of the day when I first
saw you in the gallery,” he said; “but I scarcely dared to hope the time
might come when you would accept them. If you know me well, you know
my word is sacred. Forgive the absolute obedience I have paid to your
mother’s wishes; it was not for me to judge her intentions.”
“You have saved us,” she said, interrupting him, and taking his arm to
go down to the parlor.
After hearing from Emmanuel the origin of the money entrusted to him,
Marguerite confided to him the terrible straits in which the family now
found themselves.
“I must pay those notes at once,” said Emmanuel. “If Merkstus holds them
all, you can at least save the interest. I will bring you the remaining
seventy thousand francs. My poor uncle left me quite a large sum in
ducats, which are easy to carry secretly.”
“Oh!” she said, “bring them at night; we can hide them when my father is
asleep. If he knew that I had money, he might try to force it from me.
Oh, Emmanuel, think what it is to distrust a father!” she said, weeping
and resting her forehead against the young man’s heart.
This sad, confiding movement, with which the young girl asked
protection, was the first expression of a love hitherto wrapped in
melancholy and restrained within a sphere of grief: the heart, too full,
was forced to overflow beneath the pressure of this new misery.
“What can we do; what will become of us? He sees nothing, he cares for
nothing,--neither for us nor for himself. I know not how he can live in
that garret, where the air is stifling.”
“What can you expect of a man who calls incessantly, like Richard III.,
‘My kingdom for a horse’?” said Emmanuel. “He is pitiless; and in that
you must imitate him. Pay his notes; give him, if you will, your whole
fortune; but that of your sister and of your brothers is neither yours
nor his.”
“Give him my fortune?” she said, pressing her lover’s hand and looking
at him with ardor in her eyes; “you advise it, you!--and Pierquin told a
hundred lies to make me keep it!”
“Alas! I may be selfish in my own way,” he said. “Sometimes I long for
you without fortune; you seem nearer to me then! At other times I want
you rich and happy, and I feel how paltry it is to think that the poor
grandeurs of wealth can separate us.”
“Dear, let us not speak of ourselves.”
“Ourselves!” he repeated, with rapture. Then, after a pause, he added:
“The evil is great, but it is not irreparable.”
“It can be repaired only by us: the Claes family has now no head.
To reach the stage of being neither father nor man, to have no
consciousness of justice or injustice (for, in defiance of the laws, he
has dissipated--he, so great, so noble, so upright--the property of
the children he was bound to defend), oh, to what depths must he have
fallen! My God! what is this thing he seeks?”
“Unfortunately, dear Marguerite, wrong as he is in his relation to his
family, he is right scientifically. A score of men in Europe admire him
for the very thing which others count as madness. But nevertheless
you must, without scruple, refuse to let him take the property of his
children. Great discoveries have always been accidental. If your father
ever finds the solution of the problem, it will be when it costs him
nothing; in a moment, perhaps, when he despairs of it.”
“My poor mother is happy,” said Marguerite; “she would have suffered
a thousand deaths before she died: as it was, her first encounter with
Science killed her. Alas! the strife is endless.”
“There is an end,” said Emmanuel. “When you have nothing left, Monsieur
Claes can get no further credit; then he will stop.”
“Let him stop now, then,” cried Marguerite, “for we are without a
penny!”
Monsieur de Solis went to buy up Claes’s notes and returned, bringing
them to Marguerite. Balthazar, contrary to his custom, came down a few
moments before dinner. For the first time in two years his daughter
noticed the signs of a human grief upon his face: he was again a father,
reason and judgment had overcome Science; he looked into the court-yard,
then into the garden, and when he was certain he was alone with his
daughter, he came up to her with a look of melancholy kindness.
“My child,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it with persuasive
tenderness, “forgive your old father. Yes, Marguerite, I have done
wrong. You spoke truly. So long as I have not FOUND I am a miserable
wretch. I will go away from here. I cannot see Van Claes sold,” he went
on, pointing to the martyr’s portrait. “He died for Liberty, I die for
Science; he is venerated, I am hated.”
“Hated? oh, my father, no,” she cried, throwing herself on his breast;
“we all adore you. Do we not, Felicie?” she said, turning to her sister
who came in at the moment.
“What is the matter, dear father?” said his youngest daughter, taking
his hand.
“I have ruined you.”
“Ah!” cried Felicie, “but our brothers will make our fortune. Jean is
always at the head of his class.”
“See, father,” said Marguerite, leading Balthazar in a coaxing, filial
way to the chimney-piece and taking some papers from beneath the clock,
“here are your notes of hand; but do not sign any more, there is nothing
left to pay them with--”
“Then you have money?” whispered Balthazar in her ear, when he recovered
from his surprise.
His words and manner tortured the heroic girl; she saw the delirium of
joy and hope in her father’s face as he looked about him to discover the
gold.
“Father,” she said, “I have my own fortune.”
“Give it to me,” he said with a rapacious gesture; “I will return you a
hundred-fold.”
“Yes, I will give it to you,” answered Marguerite, looking gravely at
Balthazar, who did not know the meaning she put into her words.
“Ah, my dear daughter!” he cried, “you save my life. I have thought of a
last experiment, after which nothing more is possible. If, this time, I
do not find the Absolute, I must renounce the search. Come to my arms,
my darling child; I will make you the happiest woman upon earth. You
give me glory; you bring me back to happiness; you bestow the power to
heap treasures upon my children--yes! I will load you with jewels, with
wealth.”
He kissed his daughter’s forehead, took her hands and pressed them, and
testified his joy by fondling caresses which to Marguerite seemed almost
obsequious. During the dinner he thought only of her; he looked at
her eagerly with the assiduous devotion displayed by a lover to his
mistress: if she made a movement, he tried to divine her wish, and
rose to fulfil it; he made her ashamed by the youthful eagerness of his
attentions, which were painfully out of keeping with his premature old
age. To all these cajoleries, Marguerite herself presented the contrast
of actual distress, shown sometimes by a word of doubt, sometimes by a
glance along the empty shelves of the sideboards in the dining-room.
“Well, well,” he said, following her eyes, “in six months we shall fill
them again with gold, and marvellous things. You shall be like a queen.
Bah! nature herself will belong to us, we shall rise above all created
beings--through you, you my Marguerite! Margarita,” he said, smiling,
“thy name is a prophecy. ‘Margarita’ means a pearl. Sterne says so
somewhere. Did you ever read Sterne? Would you like to have a Sterne? it
would amuse you.”
“A pearl, they say, is the result of a disease,” she answered; “we have
suffered enough already.”
“Do not be sad; you will make the happiness of those you love; you shall
be rich and all-powerful.”
“Mademoiselle has got such a good heart,” said Lemulquinier, whose
seamed face stretched itself painfully into a smile.
For the rest of the evening Balthazar displayed to his daughters all
the natural graces of his character and the charms of his conversation.
Seductive as the serpent, his lips, his eyes, poured out a magnetic
fluid; he put forth that power of genius, that gentleness of spirit,
which once fascinated Josephine and now drew, as it were, his daughters
into his heart. When Emmanuel de Solis came he found, for the first
time in many months, the father and the children reunited. The young
professor, in spite of his reserve, came under the influence of the
scene; for Claes’s manners and conversation had recovered their former
irresistible seduction!
Men of science, plunged though they be in abysses of thought and
ceaselessly employed in studying the moral world, take notice,
nevertheless, of the smallest details of the sphere in which they live.
More out of date with their surroundings than really absent-minded, they
are never in harmony with the life about them; they know and forget
all; they prejudge the future in their own minds, prophesy to their own
souls, know of an event before it happens, and yet they say nothing of
all this. If, in the hush of meditation, they sometimes use their
power to observe and recognize that which goes on around them, they are
satisfied with having divined its meaning; their occupations hurry them
on, and they frequently make false application of the knowledge they
have acquired about the things of life. Sometimes they wake from their
social apathy, or they drop from the world of thought to the world of
life; at such times they come with well-stored memories, and are by no
means strangers to what is happening.
Balthazar, who joined the perspicacity of the heart to that of the
brain, knew his daughter’s whole past; he knew, or he had guessed, the
history of the hidden love that united her with Emmanuel: he now showed
this delicately, and sanctioned their affection by taking part in it.
It was the sweetest flattery a father could bestow, and the lovers were
unable to resist it. The evening passed delightfully,--contrasting
with the griefs which threatened the lives of these poor children. When
Balthazar retired, after, as we may say, filling his family with light
and bathing them with tenderness, Emmanuel de Solis, who had shown some
embarrassment of manner, took from his pockets three thousand ducats in
gold, the possession of which he had feared to betray. He placed them
on the work-table, where Marguerite covered them with some linen she
was mending; and then he went to his own house to fetch the rest of the
money. When he returned, Felicie had gone to bed. Eleven o’clock struck;
Martha, who sat up to undress her mistress, was still with Felicie.
“Where can we hide it?” said Marguerite, unable to resist the pleasure
of playing with the gold ducats,--a childish amusement which proved
disastrous.
“I will lift this marble pedestal, which is hollow,” said Emmanuel;
“you can slip in the packages, and the devil himself will not think of
looking for them there.”
Just as Marguerite was making her last trip but one from the work-table
to the pedestal, carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry,
and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and
the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor
door; the avidity of his eyes terrified her.
“What are you doing,” he said, looking first at his daughter, whose
terror nailed her to the floor, and then at the young man, who had
hastily sprung up,--though his attitude beside the pedestal was
sufficiently significant. The rattle of the gold upon the ground was
horrible, the scattering of it prophetic.
“I could not be mistaken,” said Balthazar, sitting down; “I heard the
sound of gold.”
He was not less agitated than the young people, whose hearts were
beating so in unison that their throbs might be heard, like the ticking
of a clock, amid the profound silence which suddenly settled on the
parlor.
“Thank you, Monsieur de Solis,” said Marguerite, giving Emmanuel a
glance which meant, “Come to my rescue and help me to save this money.”
“What gold is this?” resumed Balthazar, casting at Marguerite and
Emmanuel a glance of terrible clear-sightedness.
“This gold belongs to Monsieur de Solis, who is kind enough to lend it
to me that I may pay our debts honorably,” she answered.
Emmanuel colored and turned as though to leave the room: Balthazar
caught him by the arm.
“Monsieur,” he said, “you must not escape my thanks.”
“Monsieur, you owe me none. This money belongs to Mademoiselle
Marguerite, who borrows it from me on the security of her own property,”
Emmanuel replied, looking at his mistress, who thanked him with an
almost imperceptible movement of her eyelids.
“I shall not allow that,” said Claes, taking a pen and a sheet of
paper from the table where Felicie did her writing, and turning to the
astonished young people. “How much is it?” His eager passion made him
more astute than the wiliest of rascally bailiffs: the sum was to be
his. Marguerite and Monsieur de Solis hesitated.
“Let us count it,” he said.
“There are six thousand ducats,” said Emmanuel.
“Seventy thousand francs,” remarked Claes.
The glance which Marguerite threw at her lover gave him courage.
“Monsieur,” he said, “your note bears no value; pardon this purely
technical term. I have to-day lent Mademoiselle Claes one hundred
thousand francs to redeem your notes of hand which you had no means
of paying: you are therefore unable to give me any security. These one
hundred and seventy thousand francs belong to Mademoiselle Claes, who
can dispose of them as she sees fit; but I have lent them on a pledge
that she will sign a deed securing them to me on her share of the now
denuded land of the forest of Waignies.”
Marguerite turned away her head that her lover might not see the tears
that gathered in her eyes. She knew Emmanuel’s purity of soul. Brought
up by his uncle to the practice of the sternest religious virtues, the
young man had an especial horror of falsehood: after giving his heart
and life to Marguerite Claes he now made her the sacrifice of his
conscience.
“Adieu, monsieur,” said Balthazar, “I thought you had more confidence in
a man who looked upon you with the eyes of a father.”
After exchanging a despairing look with Marguerite, Emmanuel was shown
out by Martha, who closed and fastened the street-door.
The moment the father and daughter were alone Claes said,--
“You love me, do you not?”
“Come to the point, father. You want this money: you cannot have it.”
She began to pick up the coins; her father silently helped her to gather
them together and count the sum she had dropped; Marguerite allowed
him to do so without manifesting the least distrust. When two thousand
ducats were piled on the table, Balthazar said, with a desperate air,--
“Marguerite, I must have that money.”
“If you take it, it will be robbery,” she replied coldly. “Hear me,
father: better kill us at one blow than make us suffer a hundred deaths
a day. Let it now be seen which of us must yield.”
“Do you mean to kill your father?”
“We avenge our mother,” she said, pointing to the spot where Madame
Claes died.
“My daughter, if you knew the truth of the matter, you would not use
those words to me. Listen, and I will endeavor to exlain the great
problem--but no, you cannot comprehend me,” he cried in accents of
despair. “Come, give me the money; believe for once in your father. Yes,
I know I caused your mother pain: I have dissipated--to use the word
of fools--my own fortune and injured yours; I know my children are
sacrificed for a thing you call madness; but my angel, my darling,
my love, my Marguerite, hear me! If I do not now succeed, I will give
myself up to you; I will obey you as you are bound to obey me; I will do
your will; you shall take charge of all my property; I will no longer be
the guardian of my children; I pledge myself to lay down my authority. I
swear by your mother’s memory!” he cried, shedding tears.
Marguerite turned away her head, unable to bear the sight. Claes,
thinking she meant to yield, flung himself on his knees beside her.
“Marguerite, Marguerite! give it to me--give it!” he cried. “What are
sixty thousand francs against eternal remorse? See, I shall die, this
will kill me. Listen, my word is sacred. If I fail now I will abandon my
labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I will go
away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes
I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
them.”
Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
his knees, and continued, still weeping:--
“Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall
say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and
incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands.
You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as
the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood.”
“If it were my blood, my life’s blood, I would give it to you,” she
cried; “but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister?
No. Cease, cease!” she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her
father’s caressing hands.
“Sixty thousand francs and two months,” he said, rising in anger; “that
is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth.
I curse you!” he went on; “you are no daughter of mine, you are not a
woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!--Give it
to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
forever,”--and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous energy
towards the gold.
“I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
us now,” she said, pointing to the picture.
“Try to live, if you can, with your father’s blood upon you,” cried
Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
replied by a negative motion of her head.
“Farewell, my daughter,” he said, gently, “may you live happy!”
When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness
of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities
of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and
Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to
her that days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up
the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over her as she heard him enter
his chamber. Guided by a presentiment which flashed into her soul with
the piercing keenness of lightning, she ran up the stairway, without
light, without noise, with the velocity of an arrow, and saw her father
with a pistol at his head.
“Take all!” she cried, springing towards him.
She fell into a chair. Balthazar, seeing her pallor, began to weep as
old men weep; he became like a child, he kissed her brow, he spoke in
disconnected words, he almost danced with joy, and tried to play with
her as a lover with a mistress who has made him happy.
“Enough, father, enough,” she said; “remember your promise. If you do
not succeed now, you pledge yourself to obey me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, mother!” she cried, turning towards Madame Claes’s chamber, “YOU
would have given him all--would you not?”
“Sleep in peace,” said Balthazar, “you are a good daughter.”
“Sleep!” she said, “the nights of my youth are gone; you have made me
old, father, just as you slowly withered my mother’s heart.”
“Poor child, would I could re-assure you by explaining the effects of
the glorious experiment I have now imagined! you would then comprehend
the truth.”
“I comprehend our ruin,” she said, leaving him.
The next morning, being a holiday, Emmanuel de Solis brought Jean to
spend the day.
“Well?” he said, approaching Marguerite anxiously.
“I yielded,” she replied.
“My dear life,” he said, with a gesture of melancholy joy, “if you had
withstood him I should greatly have admired you; but weak and feeble, I
adore you!”
“Poor, poor Emmanuel; what is left for us?”
“Leave the future to me,” cried the young man, with a radiant look; “we
love each other, and all is well.”