is insufficient; I can make both ends
meet at the close of the year if you do not overwhelm me with bills that
I do not expect, for purchases you tell me nothing about. When I think
I have enough to meet my quarterly expenses some unexpected bill for
potash, or zinc, or sulphur, is brought to me."

"My dear child, have patience for six weeks; after that, I will be
judicious. My little Marguerite, you shall see wonders."

"It is time you should think of your affairs. You have sold
everything,--pictures, tulips, plate; nothing is left. At least, refrain
from making debts."

"I don't wish to make any more!" he said.

"Any more?" she cried, "then you have some?"

"Mere trifles," he said, but he dropped his eyes and colored.

For the first time in her life Marguerite felt humiliated by the
lowering of her father's character, and suffered from it so much that
she dared not question him.

A month after this scene one of the Douai bankers brought a bill of
exchange for ten thousand francs signed by Claes. Marguerite asked the
banker to wait a day, and expressed her regret that she had not been
notified to prepare for this payment; whereupon he informed her that
the house of Protez and Chiffreville held nine other bills to the same
amount, falling due in consecutive months.

"All is over!" cried Marguerite, "the time has come."

She sent for her father, and walked up and down the parlor with hasty
steps, talking to herself:--

"A hundred thousand francs!" she cried. "I must find them, or see my
father in prison. What am I to do?"

Balthazar did not come. Weary of waiting for him, Marguerite went up to
the laboratory. As she entered she saw him in the middle of an immense,
brilliantly-lighted room, filled with machinery and dusty glass vessels:
here and there were books, and tables encumbered with specimens and
products ticketed and numbered. On all sides the disorder of scientific
pursuits contrasted strongly with Flemish habits. This litter of retorts
and vaporizers, metals, fantastically colored crystals, specimens hooked
upon the walls or lying on the furnaces, surrounded the central figure
of Balthazar Claes, without a coat, his arms bare like those of a
workman, his breast exposed, and showing the white hair which covered
it. His eyes were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough.
The receiver of this instrument was covered with a lens made of
double convex glasses, the space between the glasses being