of his own movements by the tyranny of ideas.

Madame Claes keenly regretted her defects of education and memory. It
was difficult for her to sustain an interesting conversation for any
length of time; perhaps this is always difficult between two persons who
have said everything to each other, and are forced to seek for subjects
of interest outside the life of the heart, or the life of material
existence. The life of the heart has its own moments of expansion which
need some stimulus to bring them forth; discussions of material life
cannot long occupy superior minds accustomed to decide promptly; and the
mere gossip of society is intolerable to loving natures. Consequently,
two isolated beings who know each other thoroughly ought to seek their
enjoyments in the higher regions of thought; for it is impossible to
satisfy with paltry things the immensity of the relation between them.
Moreover, when a man has accustomed himself to deal with great subjects,
he becomes unamusable, unless he preserves in the depths of his heart
a certain guileless simplicity and unconstraint which often make great
geniuses such charming children; but the childhood of the heart is a
rare human phenomenon among those whose mission it is to see all, know
all, and comprehend all.

During these first months, Madame Claes worked her way through this
critical situation, by unwearying efforts, which love or necessity
suggested to her. She tried to learn backgammon, which she had never
been able to play, but now, from an impetus easy to understand, she
ended by mastering it. Then she interested Balthazar in the education of
his daughters, and asked him to direct their studies. All such resources
were, however, soon exhausted. There came a time when Josephine's
relation to Balthazar was like that of Madame de Maintenon to Louis
XIV.; she had to amuse the unamusable, but without the pomps of power or
the wiles of a court which could play comedies like the sham embassies
from the King of Siam and the Shah of Persia. After wasting the revenues
of France, Louis XIV., no longer young or successful, was reduced to the
expedients of a family heir to raise the money he needed; in the midst
of his grandeur he felt his impotence, and the royal nurse who had
rocked the cradles of his children was often at her wit's end to rock
his, or soothe the monarch now suffering from his misuse of men and
things, of life and God. Claes, on the contrary, suffered from too muc