第65章

The town shall know nothing of our inner life.If you were still to live in this house you would be an obstacle to the means my sister and I are about to employ to restore comfort and ease to the home.Have Iabused the authority you gave me by putting you in a position to remake your own fortune? In a few years, if you so will, you can easily become the receiver-general.""In other words, Marguerite," said Balthazar, gently, "you turn me out of my own house.""I do not deserve that bitter reproach," replied the daughter, quelling the tumultuous beatings of her heart."You will come back to us in a manner becoming to your dignity.Besides, father, I have your promise.You are bound to obey me.My uncle has stayed here that he might himself accompany you to Bretagne, and not leave you to make the journey alone.""I shall not go," said Balthazar, rising; "I need no help from any one to restore my property and pay what I owe to my children.""It would be better, certainly," replied Marguerite, calmly."But now I ask you to reflect on our respective situations, which I will explain in a few words.If you stay in this house your children will leave it, so that you may remain its master.""Marguerite!" cried Balthazar.

"In that case," she said, continuing her words without taking notice of her father's anger, "it will be necessary to notify the minister of your refusal, if you decide not to accept this honorable and lucrative post, which, in spite of our many efforts, we should never have obtained but for certain thousand-franc notes my uncle slipped into the glove of a lady.""My children leave me!" he exclaimed.

"You must leave us or we must leave you," she said."If I were your only child, I should do as my mother did, without murmuring against my fate; but my brothers and sister shall not perish beside you with hunger and despair.I promised it to her who died there," she said, pointing to the place where her mother's bed had stood."We have hidden our troubles from you; we have suffered in silence; our strength is gone.My father, we are not on the edge of an abyss, we are at the bottom of it.Courage is not sufficient to drag us out of it; our efforts must not be incessantly brought to nought by the caprices of a passion.""My dear children," cried Balthazar, seizing Marguerite's hand, "Iwill help you, I will work, I--"

"Here is the means," she answered, showing him the official letter.

"But, my darling, the means you offer me are too slow; you make me lose the fruits of ten years' work, and the enormous sums of money which my laboratory represents.There," he said, pointing towards the garret, "are our real resources."Marguerite walked towards the door, saying:--"Father, you must choose."

"Ah! my daughter, you are very hard," he replied, sitting down in an armchair and allowing her to leave him.

The next morning, on coming downstairs, Marguerite learned from Lemulquinier that Monsieur Claes had gone out.This simple announcement turned her pale; her face was so painfully significant that the old valet remarked hastily:--"Don't be troubled, mademoiselle; monsieur said he would be back at eleven o'clock to breakfast.He didn't go to bed all night.At two in the morning he was still standing in the parlor, looking through the window at the laboratory.I was waiting up in the kitchen; I saw him;he wept; he is in trouble.Here's the famous month of July when the sun is able to enrich us all, and if you only would--""Enough," said Marguerite, divining the thoughts that must have assailed her father's mind.

A phenomenon which often takes possession of persons leading sedentary lives had seized upon Balthazar; his life depended, so to speak, on the places with which it was identified; his thought was so wedded to his laboratory and to the house he lived in that both were indispensable to him,--just as the Bourse becomes a necessity to a stock-gambler, to whom the public holidays are so much lost time.Here were his hopes; here the heavens contained the only atmosphere in which his lungs could breathe the breath of life.This alliance of places and things with men, which is so powerful in feeble natures, becomes almost tyrannical in men of science and students.To leave his house was, for Balthazar, to renounce Science, to abandon the Problem, --it was death.

Marguerite was a prey to anxiety until the breakfast hour.The former scene in which Balthazar had meant to kill himself came back to her memory, and she feared some tragic end to the desperate situation in which her father was placed.She came and went restlessly about the parlor, and quivered every time the bell or the street-door sounded.