As a wife, she suffered in heart; as a
mother, through her children; as a Christian, for all.
She kept silence, and hid the cruel struggle in her soul. Her husband,
sole arbiter of the family fate, was the master by whose will it must
be guided; he was responsible to God only. Besides, could she reproach
him for the use he now made of his fortune, after the disinterestedness
he had shown to her for many happy years? Was she to judge his
purposes? And yet her conscience, in keeping with the spirit of the
law, told her that parents were the depositaries and guardians of
property, and possessed no right to alienate the material welfare
of the children. To escape replying to such stern questions she
preferred to shut her eyes, like one who refuses to see the abyss into
whose depths he knows he is about to fall.
For more than six months her husband had given her no money for the
household expenses. She sold secretly, in Paris, the handsome diamond
ornaments her brother had given her on her marriage, and placed the
family on a footing of the strictest economy. She sent away the
governess of her children, and even the nurse of little Jean. Formerly
the luxury of carriages and horses was unknown among the burgher
families, so simple were they in their habits, so proud in their
feelings; no provision for that modern innovation had therefore been
made at the House of Claes, and Balthazar was obliged to have his
stable and coach-house in a building opposite to his own house: his
present occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of
his establishment, which belongs exclusively to men.
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