ce his return to social life and domestic bliss, the servant of
science had recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the
master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of
surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special character
to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all
other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most
fleeting,--he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants
and flowers, and prepared choice bouquets for all the ladies.

The other details of the fete were in keeping with this unheard-of
luxury, and nothing seemed likely to mar the effect. But the
Twenty-ninth Bulletin and the news of the terrible disasters of the
grand army in Russia, and at the passage of the Beresina, were made
known on the afternoon of the appointed day. A sincere and profound
grief was felt in Douai, and those who were present at the fete, moved
by a natural feeling of patriotism, unanimously declined to dance.

Among the letters which arrived that day in Douai, was one for Balthazar
from Monsieur de Wierzchownia, then in Dresden and dying, he wrote,
from wounds received in one of the late engagements. He remembered his
promise, and desired to bequeath to his former host several ideas on the
subject of the Absolute, which had come to him since the period of their
meeting. The letter plunged Claes into a reverie which apparently did
honor to his patriotism; but his wife was not misled by it. To her, this
festal day brought a double mourning: and the ball, during which the
House of Claes shone with departing lustre, was sombre and sad in spite
of its magnificence, and the many choice treasures gathered by the hands
of six generations, which the people of Douai now beheld for the last
time.

Marguerite Claes, just sixteen, was the queen of the day, and on this
occasion her parents presented her to society. She attracted all eyes by
the extreme simplicity and candor of her air and manner, and especially
by the harmony of her form and countenance with the characteristics of
her home. She was the embodiment of the Flemish girl whom the painters
of that country loved to represent,--the head perfectly rounded and
full, chestnut hair parted in the middle and laid smoothly on the brow,
gray eyes with a mixture of green, handsome arms, natural stoutness
which did not detract from her beauty, a timid air, and yet, on the
high square brow an expression of