her to the church, talking in a low voice of her situation.

"My dear cousin," he said, "unless I fail in the friendship which binds
me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your position,
nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who but you can
hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The rents from
the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on the sums he
has borrowed. If he cuts the wood on them he destroys your last chance
of safety in the future. My cousin Balthazar owes at this moment thirty
thousand francs to the house of Protez and Chiffreville. How can you pay
them? What will you live on? If Claes persists in sending for reagents,
retorts, voltaic batteries, and other such playthings, what will become
of you? Your whole property, except the house and furniture, has been
dissipated in gas and carbon; yesterday he talked of mortgaging the
house, and in answer to a remark of mine, he cried out, 'The devil!' It
was the first sign of reason I have known him show for three years."

Madame Claes pressed the notary's arm, and said in a tone of suffering,
"Keep it secret."

Overwhelmed by these plain words of startling clearness, the poor woman,
pious as she was, could not pray; she sat still on her chair between
her children, with her prayer-book open, but not turning its leaves; her
mind was sunk in meditations as absorbing as those of her husband. The
Spanish sense of honor, the Flemish integrity, resounded in her
soul with a peal louder than any organ. The ruin of her children was
accomplished! Between them and their father's honor she must no longer
hesitate. The necessity of a coming struggle with her husband terrified
her; in her eyes he was so great, so majestic, that the mere prospect of
his anger made her tremble as at a vision of the divine wrath. She must
now depart from the submission she had sacredly practised as a wife. The
interests of her children compelled her to oppose, in his most cherished
tastes, the man she idolized. Must she not daily force him back to
common matters from the higher realms of Science; drag him forcibly from
a smiling future and plunge him into a materialism hideous to artists
and great men? To her, Balthazar Claes was a Titan of science, a man big
with glory; he could only have forgotten her for the riches of a mighty
hope. Then too, was he not profoundly wise? she had heard him talk
with such good sense on every subje