f your paternity, which you employ only for our destruction, I have on
my side your ancestors and your honor, whose voice is louder than that
of chemistry. The Family is greater than Science. I have been too long
your daughter."

"And you choose to be my executioner," he said, in a feeble voice.

Marguerite turned and fled away, that she might not abdicate the part
she had just assumed: she fancied she heard again her mother's voice
saying to her, "Do not oppose your father too much; love him well."

CHAPTER XII

"Mademoiselle has made a pretty piece of work up yonder," said
Lemulquinier, coming down to the kitchen for his breakfast. "We were
just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap
of July sun, for monsieur,--ah, what a man! he's almost in the shoes
of the good God himself!--was almost within THAT," he said to Josette,
clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting hold of the
Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about
notes of hand."

"Well, pay them yourself," said Martha, "out of your wages."

"Where's the butter for my bread?" said Lemulquinier to the cook.

"Where's the money to buy it?" she answered, sharply. "Come, old
villain, if you make gold in that devil's kitchen of yours, why don't
you make butter? 'Twouldn't be half so difficult, and you could sell it
in the market for enough to make the pot boil. We all eat dry bread. The
young ladies are satisfied with dry bread and nuts, and do you expect to
be better fed than your masters? Mademoiselle won't spend more than one
hundred francs a month for the whole household. There's only one dinner
for all. If you want dainties you've got your furnaces upstairs where
you fricassee pearls till there's nothing else talked of in town. Get
your roast chickens up there."

Lemulquinier took his dry bread and went out.

"He will go and buy something to eat with his own money," said Martha;
"all the better,--it is just so much saved. Isn't he stingy, the old
scarecrow!"

"Starve him! that's the only way to manage him," said Josette. "For a
week past he hasn't rubbed a single floor; I have to do his work, for
he is always upstairs. He can very well afford to pay me for it with the
present of a few herrings; if he brings any home, I shall lay hands on
them, I can tell him that."

"Ah!" exclaimed Martha, "I hear Mademoiselle Marguerite crying. Her
wizard of a father would swallow the house at