er burden:
does not the woman ever suffer for the two? At this moment she chose to
believe in his success, that she might justify to herself her connivance
in the probable wreck of their fortunes.

"The love of all my life can be no recompense for your devotion,
Pepita," said Claes, deeply moved.

He had scarcely uttered the words when Marguerite and Felicie entered
the room and wished him good-morning. Madame Claes lowered her eyes
and remained for a moment speechless in presence of her children,
whose future she had just sacrificed to a delusion; her husband, on the
contrary, took them on his knees, and talked to them gaily, delighted to
give vent to the joy that choked him.

From this day Madame Claes shared the impassioned life of her husband.
The future of her children, their father's credit, were two motives as
powerful to her as glory and science were to Claes. After the diamonds
were sold in Paris, and the purchase of chemicals was again begun, the
unhappy woman never knew another hour's peace of mind. The demon of
Science and the frenzy of research which consumed her husband now
agitated her own mind; she lived in a state of continual expectation,
and sat half-lifeless for days together in the deep armchair, paralyzed
by the very violence of her wishes, which, finding no food, like those
of Balthazar, in the daily hopes of the laboratory, tormented her spirit
and aggravated her doubts and fears. Sometimes, blaming herself for
compliance with a passion whose object was futile and condemned by the
Church, she would rise, go to the window on the courtyard and gaze with
terror at the chimney of the laboratory. If the smoke were rising, an
expression of despair came into her face, a conflict of thoughts and
feelings raged in her heart and mind. She beheld her children's future
fleeing in that smoke, but--was she not saving their father's life? was
it not her first duty to make him happy? This last thought calmed her
for a moment.

She obtained the right to enter the laboratory and remain there; but
even this melancholy satisfaction was soon renounced. Her sufferings
were too keen when she saw that Balthazar took no notice of her, or
seemed at times annoyed by her presence; in that fatal place she went
through paroxysms of jealous impatience, angry desires to destroy the
building,--a living death of untold miseries. Lemulquinier became to
her a species of barometer: if she heard him whistle as he laid the
breakf