ctricity manifest itself by a greater
variety of compounds in him than in any other animal? Should not he have
faculties above those of all other created beings for the purpose of
absorbing fuller portions of the Absolute principle? and may he not
assimilate that principle so as to produce, in some more perfect
mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a retort. In my
judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other
product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an
ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated
to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the
dancer, the large eater, are the ones who disperse the force resulting
from their electrical apparatus. Consequently, our feelings--"

"Enough, Balthazar! you terrify me; you commit sacrilege. What, is my
love--"

"An ethereal matter disengaged, an emanation, the key of the Absolute.
Conceive if I--I, the first, should find it, find it, find it!"

As he uttered the words in three rising tones, the expression of his
face rose by degrees to inspiration. "I shall make metals," he cried; "I
shall make diamonds, I shall be a co-worker with Nature!"

"Will you be the happier?" she asked in despair. "Accursed science!
accursed demon! You forget, Claes, that you commit the sin of pride, the
sin of which Satan was guilty; you assume the attributes of God."

"Oh! oh! God!"

"He denies Him!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Claes, God wields a
power that you can never gain."

At this argument, which seemed to discredit his beloved Science, he
looked at his wife and trembled.

"What power?" he asked.

"Primal force--motion," she replied. "This is what I learn from the
books your mania has constrained me to read. Analyze fruits, flowers,
Malaga wine; you will discover, undoubtedly, that their substances come,
like those of your water-cress, from a medium that seems foreign to
them. You can, if need be, find them in nature; but when you have them,
can you combine them? can you make the flowers, the fruits, the Malaga
wine? Will you have grasped the inscrutable effects of the sun, of the
atmosphere of Spain? Ah! decomposing is not creating."

"If I discover the magistral force, I shall be able to create."

"Will nothing stop him?" cried Pepita. "Oh! my love, my love! it is
killed! I have lost him!"

She wept bitterly, and her eyes, illumined by grief and by the s