. The father of Balthazar, a
last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind him the finest
known collection of tulips.

Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous capital,
and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house that was
simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within by pearls
of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes possessed a
country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai. Instead of
basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he followed the
old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income. Twelve hundred
ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with those of the
richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil Code proved
the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the equal division of
property, the Title of Succession would some day leave each child with
limited means, and disperse the treasures of the Claes collection.
Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes, invested his wife's
property so as to secure to each child a fortune eventually equal to his
own. The house of Claes still maintained its moderate scale of living,
and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for wars that had laid waste the
country, but which in ten years' time, if well-preserved, would return
an enormous value.

The upper ranks of society in Douai, which Monsieur Claes frequented,
appreciated so justly the noble character and qualities of his wife
that, by tacit consent she was released from those social duties to
which the provinces cling so tenaciously. During the winter season, when
she lived in town, she seldom went into society; society came to her.
She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every month.
Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house; where,
indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed on the
education of her children tended to keep her.

Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people. Balthazar
Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to perpetuate,
seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn vigor and
fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far better than the
cultivation of tulips (though to