uerite, presented her with the diamond. "My angel," he said gently,
"this belongs to you." Then, to the notary: "Let us proceed."

_V.--Discovery of the Absolute_

Happiness reigned in the Maison Claes, Balthazar conducted a few but
inexpensive experiments, and surrendered himself more and more to the
happiness of home life. It was as if the devil had been exorcised. The
death of relatives presently carried Emmanuel and Marguerite to Spain,
and their return was delayed by the birth of a child. When they did
arrive in Flanders, one morning towards the end of September, they found
the house in the Rue de Paris shut up, and a ring at the bell brought no
one to open the door. A shopkeeper near at hand said that M. Claes had
left the house with Lemulquinier about an hour ago. Emmanuel went in
search of them, while a locksmith opened the door of the Maison Claes.
The house was as if the Absolute in the form of fire had passed through
all its rooms. Pictures, furniture, carpets, hangings, carvings--all
were swept clean away. Marguerite wept as she looked about her, and
forgave her father. She went downstairs to await his coming. How he must
have suffered in this bare house! Fear filled her heart. Had his reason
failed him? Should she see him enter--a tottering and enfeebled old man,
broken by the sufferings which he had borne so proudly for science? As
she waited, the past rose before her eyes--the long past of struggle
against their enemy, the Absolute; the long past, when she was a child,
and her mother had been now so joyous and now so sorrowful.

But she did not realise the calamity of her father's tragedy--a tragedy
at once sublime and miserable. To the people of Douai he was not a
scientific genius wrestling with Nature for her hidden mysteries, but a
wicked old spendthrift, greedy like a miser for the Philosopher's Stone.
Everybody in Douai, from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie to the
people, knew all about old Claes, "the alchemist." His home was called
the "Devil's House." People pointed at him, shouted after him in the
street. Lemulquinier said that these were murmurs of applause for
genius.

It happened that on this morning of Marguerite's return, Balthazar and
Lemulquinier sat down on a bench in the Place Saint-Jacques to rest in
the sun. Some children passing to school saw the two old men, talked
about them, laughed together, and presently approached. One of them, who
carried a basket, and was eating a p