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.
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