tone of
dreadful conviction: "I am a wretch; I have gambled away the lives of
my children, and your life; you can have no happiness unless I kill
myself,"--the words struck home to her heart; she knew her husband's
nature enough to fear he might at once act out the despairing wish: an
inward convulsion, disturbing the very sources of life itself, seized
her, and was all the more dangerous because she controlled its violent
effects beneath a deceptive calm of manner.

"My friend," she said, "I have consulted, not Pierquin, whose friendship
does not hinder him from feeling some secret satisfaction at our ruin,
but an old man who has been as good to me as a father. The Abbe de
Solis, my confessor, has shown me how we can still save ourselves from
ruin. He came to see the pictures. The value of those in the gallery is
enough to pay the sums you have borrowed on your property, and also all
that you owe to Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, who have no doubt an
account against you."

Claes made an affirmative sign and bowed his head, the hair of which was
now white.

"Monsieur de Solis knows the Happe and Duncker families of Amsterdam;
they have a mania for pictures, and are anxious, like all parvenus,
to display a luxury which ought to belong only to the old families:
he thinks they will pay the full value of ours. By this means we can
recover our independence, and out of the purchase money, which will
amount to over one hundred thousand ducats, you will have enough to
continue the experiments. Your daughters and I will be content with very
little; we can fill up the empty frames with other pictures in course of
time and by economy; meantime you will be happy."

Balthazar raised his head and looked at his wife with a joy that was
mingled with fear. Their roles were changed. The wife was the protector
of the husband. He, so tender, he, whose heart was so at one with his
Pepita's, now held her in his arms without perceiving the horrible
convulsion that made her palpitate, and even shook her hair and her lips
with a nervous shudder.

"I dared not tell you," he said, "that between me and the Unconditioned,
the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I
only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some
centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,--in short, in a
vacuum."

Madame Claes could not endure the egotism of this reply. She expected a
passionate acknowledgment