'--My Pepita," cried Balthazar,
taking his wife's hands, "tears of anguish rolled down his hollow
cheeks, as he cast into my soul the fiery arguments that Lavoisier had
timidly recognized without daring to follow them out--"
"Oh!" cried Madame Claes, unable to refrain from interrupting her
husband, "that man, passing one night under our roof, was able to
deprive us of your love, to destroy with a phrase, a word, the
happiness of a family! Oh, my dear Balthazar, did he make the sign of
the cross? did you examine him? The Tempter alone could have had that
flaming eye which sent forth the fire of Prometheus. Yes, none but the
devil could have torn you from me. From that day you have been neither
husband, nor father, nor master of your family."
"What!" exclaimed Balthazar, springing to his feet and casting a
piercing glance at his wife, "do you blame your husband for rising
above the level of other men that he may lay at your feet the divine
purple of his glory, as a paltry offering in exchange for the
treasures of your heart! Ah, my Pepita," he cried, "you do not know
what I have done. In these three years I have made giant strides--"
His face seemed to his wife at this moment more transfigured under the
fires of genius than she had ever seen it under the fires of love; and
she wept as she listened to him.
"I have combined chlorine and nitrogen; I have decomposed many
substances hitherto considered simple; I have discovered new metals.
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