Is our father going away?" cried Felicie.

Monsieur de Solis entered, bringing Jean.

"You must leave him with me to-day," said Balthazar, putting his son
beside him. "I am going away to-morrow, and I want to bid him good-bye."

Emmanuel glanced at Marguerite, who held down her head. It was a
gloomy day for the family; every one was sad, and tried to repress
both thoughts and tears. This was not an absence, it was an exile.
All instinctively felt the humiliation of the father in thus publicly
declaring his ruin by accepting an office and leaving his family, at
Balthazar's age. At this crisis he was great, while Marguerite was firm;
he seemed to accept nobly the punishment of faults which the tyrannous
power of genius had forced him to commit. When the evening was over, and
father and daughter were again alone, Balthazar, who throughout the day
had shown himself tender and affectionate as in the first years of his
fatherhood, held out his hand and said to Marguerite with a tenderness
that was mingled with despair,--

"Are you satisfied with your father?"

"You are worthy of HIM," said Marguerite, pointing to the portrait of
Van Claes.

The next morning Balthazar, followed by Lemulquinier, went up to
the laboratory, as if to bid farewell to the hopes he had so fondly
cherished, and which in that scene of his toil were living things to
him. Master and man looked at each other sadly as they entered the
garret they were about to leave, perhaps forever. Balthazar gazed at the
various instruments over which his thoughts so long had brooded; each
was connected with some experiment or some research. He sadly ordered
Lemulquinier to evaporate the gases and the dangerous acids, and to
separate all substances which might produce explosions. While taking
these precautions, he gave way to bitter regrets, like those uttered by
a condemned man before going to the scaffold.

"Here," he said, stopping before a china capsule in which two wires of
a voltaic pile were dipped, "is an experiment whose results ought to be
watched. If it succeeds--dreadful thought!--my children will have driven
from their home a father who could fling diamonds at their feet. In a
combination of carbon and sulphur," he went on, speaking to himself,
"carbon plays the part of an electro-positive substance; the
crystallization ought to begin at the negative pole; and in case of
decomposition, the carbon would crop into crystals--"

"Ah! is that how it woul