Where the family saw
happiness he saw fortune. While helping Balthazar in his experiments
he had come to share his beliefs. Whether he really understood the
drift of his master's researches from certain exclamations which
escaped the chemist when expected results disappointed him, or whether
the innate tendency of mankind towards imitation made him adopt the
ideas of the man in whose atmosphere he lived, certain it is that
Lemulquinier had conceived for his master a superstitious feeling that
was a mixture of terror, admiration, and selfishness. The laboratory
was to him what a lottery-office is to the masses,--organized hope.
Every night he went to bed saying to himself, "To-morrow we may float
in gold"; and every morning he woke with a faith as firm as that of
the night before.
His name proved that his origin was wholly Flemish. In former days the
lower classes were known by some name or nickname derived from their
trades, their surroundings, their physical conformation, or their
moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family
which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of
linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt
was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed
from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown
misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition
of a serf, with the addition of wages.
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