Their wishes, their pleasures, are subordinated to
the caprices of that other life outside of their own; to them the only
dreadful future is to lose him.
At this moment, therefore, her children came between Pepita and her
true life, just as Science had come between herself and Balthazar. And
thus, when she reached home after vespers, and threw herself into the
deep armchair before the window of the parlor, she sent away her
children, directing them to keep perfectly quiet, and despatched a
message to her husband, through Lemulquinier, saying that she wished
to see him. But although the old valet did his best to make his master
leave the laboratory, Balthazar scarcely heeded him. Madame Claes thus
gained time for reflection. She sat thinking, paying no attention to
the hour nor the light. The thought of owing thirty thousand francs
that could not be paid renewed her past anguish and joined it to that
of the present and the future. This influx of painful interests,
ideas, and feelings overcame her, and she wept.
As Balthazar entered at last through the panelled door, the expression
of his face seemed to her more dreadful, more absorbed, more
distracted than she had yet seen it. When he made her no answer she
was magnetized for a moment by the fixity of that blank look emptied
of all expression, by the consuming ideas that issued as if distilled
from that bald brow. Under the shock of this impression she wished to
die.
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