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.
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