life
was spent, and struggle hand to hand against her rival by sharing
her husband's labors during the long hours he gave to that terrible
mistress. She determined to slip secretly into the mysterious laboratory
of seduction, and obtain the right to be there always. Lemulquinier
alone had that right, and she meant to share it with him; but to prevent
his witnessing the contention with her husband which she feared at the
outset, she waited for an opportunity when the valet should be out of
the way. For a while she studied the goings and comings of the man with
angry impatience; did he not know that which was denied to her--all that
her husband hid from her, all that she dared not inquire into? Even a
servant was preferred to a wife!

The day came; she approached the place, trembling, yet almost happy. For
the first time in her life she encountered Balthazar's anger. She had
hardly opened the door before he sprang upon her, seized her, threw her
roughly on the staircase, so that she narrowly escaped rolling to the
bottom.

"God be praised! you are still alive!" he cried, raising her.

A glass vessel had broken into fragments over Madame Claes, who saw her
husband standing by her, pale, terrified, and almost livid.

"My dear, I forbade you to come here," he said, sitting down on the
stairs, as though prostrated. "The saints have saved your life! By what
chance was it that my eyes were on the door when you opened it? We have
just escaped death."

"Then I might have been happy!" she exclaimed.

"My experiment has failed," continued Balthazar. "You alone could I
forgive for that terrible disappointment. I was about to decompose
nitrogen. Go back to your own affairs."

Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.

"Decompose nitrogen!" said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber,
and burst into tears.

The phrase was unintelligible to her. Men, trained by education to have
a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is
for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves.
More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when
the language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from
letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain
as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in
love than men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but
his mind.

To Madame Claes the se