fail now I will abandon my
labors; I will leave Flanders,--France even, if you demand it; I will go
away and toil like a day-laborer to recover, sou by sou, the fortunes
I have lost, and restore to my children all that Science has taken from
them."

Marguerite tried to raise her father, but he persisted in remaining on
his knees, and continued, still weeping:--

"Be tender and obedient for this last time! If I do not succeed, I will
myself declare your hardness just. You shall call me a fool; you shall
say I am a bad father; you may even tell me that I am ignorant and
incapable. And when I hear you say those words I will kiss your hands.
You may beat me, if you will, and when you strike I will bless you as
the best of daughters, remembering that you have given me your blood."

"If it were my blood, my life's blood, I would give it to you," she
cried; "but can I let Science cut the throats of my brothers and sister?
No. Cease, cease!" she said, wiping her tears and pushing aside her
father's caressing hands.

"Sixty thousand francs and two months," he said, rising in anger; "that
is all I want: but my daughter stands between me and fame and wealth.
I curse you!" he went on; "you are no daughter of mine, you are not a
woman, you have no heart, you will never be a mother or a wife!--Give it
to me, let me take it, my little one, my precious child, I will love you
forever,"--and he stretched his hand with a movement of hideous energy
towards the gold.

"I am helpless against physical force; but God and the great Claes see
us now," she said, pointing to the picture.

"Try to live, if you can, with your father's blood upon you," cried
Balthazar, looking at her with abhorrence. He rose, glanced round the
room, and slowly left it. When he reached the door he turned as a beggar
might have done and implored his daughter with a gesture, to which she
replied by a negative motion of her head.

"Farewell, my daughter," he said, gently, "may you live happy!"

When he had disappeared, Marguerite remained in a trance which separated
her from earth; she was no longer in the parlor; she lost consciousness
of physical existence; she had wings, and soared amid the immensities
of the moral world, where Thought contracts the limits both of Time and
Space, where a divine hand lifts the veil of the Future. It seemed to
her that days elapsed between each footfall of her father as he went up
the stairs; then a shudder of dread went over