readful thoughts: they came to me in the lightnings
of desolation and anguish. Oh, spare my children! let these words echo
in your heart. I cry them to you with my last breath. The wife is dead,
dead; you have stripped her slowly, gradually, of her feelings, of her
joys. Alas! without that cruel care could I have lived so long? But
those poor children did not forsake me! they have grown beside my
anguish, the mother still survives. Spare them! Spare my children!"

"Lemulquinier!" cried Claes in a voice of thunder.

The old man appeared.

"Go up and destroy all--instruments, apparatus, everything! Be careful,
but destroy all. I renounce Science," he said to his wife.

"Too late," she answered, looking at Lemulquinier. "Marguerite!" she
cried, feeling herself about to die.

Marguerite came through the doorway and uttered a piercing cry as she
saw her mother's eyes now glazing.

"MARGUERITE!" repeated the dying woman.

The exclamation contained so powerful an appeal to her daughter, she
invested that appeal with such authority, that the cry was like a dying
bequest. The terrified family ran to her side and saw her die; the vital
forces were exhausted in that last conversation with her husband.

Balthazar and Marguerite stood motionless, she at the head, he at the
foot of the bed, unable to believe in the death of the woman whose
virtues and exhaustless tenderness were known fully to them alone.
Father and daughter exchanged looks freighted with meaning: the daughter
judged the father, and already the father trembled, seeing in his
daughter an instrument of vengeance. Though memories of the love with
which his Pepita had filled his life crowded upon his mind, and gave to
her dying words a sacred authority whose voice his soul must ever
hear, yet Balthazar knew himself helpless in the grasp of his attendant
genius; he heard the terrible mutterings of his passion, denying him the
strength to carry his repentance into action: he feared himself.

When the grave had closed upon Madame Claes, one thought filled the
minds of all,--the house had had a soul, and that soul was now departed.
The grief of the family was so intense that the parlor, where the noble
woman still seemed to linger, was closed; no one had the courage to
enter it.

CHAPTER X

Society practises none of the virtues it demands from individuals: every
hour it commits crimes, but the crimes are committed in words; it paves
the way for evil action