me in her life the compliments of a man,
listened to this language, always sweet however deceptive; she took
emptiness for depth, and needing an object on which to fix the vague
emotions of her heart, she allowed the lawyer to occupy her mind.
Envious perhaps, though quite unconsciously, of the loving attentions
with which Emmanuel surrounded her sister, she doubtless wished to be,
like Marguerite, the object of the thoughts and cares of a man.

Pierquin readily perceived the preference which Felicie accorded him
over Emmanuel, and to him it was a reason why he should persist in
his attentions; so that in the end he went further than he at first
intended. Emmanuel watched the beginning of this passion, false perhaps
in the lawyer, artless in Felicie, whose future was at stake. Soon,
little colloquies followed, a few words said in a low voice behind
Emmanuel's back, trifling deceptions which give to a look or a word a
meaning whose insidious sweetness may be the cause of innocent mistakes.
Relying on his intimacy with Felicie, Pierquin tried to discover the
secret of Marguerite's journey, and to know if it were really a
question of her marriage, and whether he must renounce all hope; but,
notwithstanding his clumsy cleverness in questioning them, neither
Balthazar nor Felicie could give him any light, for the good reason
that they were in the dark themselves: Marguerite in taking the reins
of power seemed to have followed its maxims and kept silence as to her
projects.

The gloomy sadness of Balthazar and his great depression made it
difficult to get through the evenings. Though Emmanuel succeeded in
making him play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present; during
most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid.
Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes,
a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the
burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of
genius, gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic
spectacle, fit to touch the hearts of the most unfeeling of men. Even
Pierquin could not enter without respect the presence of that caged
lion, whose eyes, full of baffled power, now calmed by sadness and faded
from excess of light, seemed to proffer a prayer for charity which the
mouth dared not utter. Sometimes a lightning flash crossed that withered
face, whose fires revived at the conception of a